This is somewhat outside my usual reading remit. I actually kind of bought it accidentally. I gave it a try, but honestly this weekend is just kickingThis is somewhat outside my usual reading remit. I actually kind of bought it accidentally. I gave it a try, but honestly this weekend is just kicking my ass, so it’s not the best time to be reading something that doesn’t immediately appeal to me.

DNFing this because if I finish it I’m not going to like it, and that isn’t really the book’s fault. It’s not a bad book, but I’m not in the right mood, either to appreciate its charming points or critique its flaws. Sometimes the best decision is to just set something aside and reach for something I know I’ll enjoy....more

Oh. Em. Gee. Saga, Volume 7 might just be the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I’ve read this year. It’s not quite at the nadir of A Fine Balance,Oh. Em. Gee. Saga, Volume 7 might just be the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I’ve read this year. It’s not quite at the nadir of A Fine Balance, but it comes close. I am struggling to recall a single positive and redeeming moment in this book. There’s … there’s a lot of bleakness and heartbreak here.

As with many a long-running series, I’m starting to run out of new and creative commentary. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples once again deliver a packed collection of chapters that both advance the story and drive the characters to new heights (or, er, in this case, depths). This volume might be notable for how it is more tightly focused on certain characters. There is a little bit of attention on the wider galactic politics, particularly as they involve a comet where much of the action takes place. For the most part, however, this story focuses on Alana, Marko, Hazel, and the people closest to them.

The worldbuilding remains top notch. I love the imagination and dedication involved in portraying such a diversity of intelligent, alien life in this universe. It isn’t just the myriad and miraculous forms that Staples depicts—it’s the whole aesthetic, the way everything fits together (or doesn’t), the very ideas involved, like a bounty hunter with two heads. As someone who doesn’t visualize when I read, I find that this is where the graphic novel medium excels for me. I just finished Terminal Alliance, in which Jim C. Hines similarly attempts to describe a diverse universe. But because it was just words on paper, I couldn’t picture it, so I had got a lot less from his descriptions than I do from something like Saga.

Although Hazel is growing up, she is less prominent here except as a plot device around which the other characters revolve. Indeed, it’s hard to say that any of the regular cast really shine as protagonists in this book. It seems more like they have things happen to them, and react, as they each struggle with their own demons. That isn’t a bad thing—if anything, it just makes this volume feel more like an interlude from one massive adventure to the next. Where will the ship go next? What will Marko be like now? How will he and Alana deal with this latest round of setbacks? And when will their paths finally cross with the Will, still broken and now disbarred from the bounty hunting union, scheming a way to get back everything he feels has been ripped away from him. Will Sir Robot find his kid?

You have to watch out for those robots. Never know when they might develop thoughts of their own. Or sexual orientations, kinks, and an understandingYou have to watch out for those robots. Never know when they might develop thoughts of their own. Or sexual orientations, kinks, and an understanding of the way humans misunderstand them.

Autonomous plumbs the depths of humanity through split narration. Annalee Newitz follows a very human, and very flawed, anti-patent crusader and a pair of patent-enforcement agents, one of whom is a self-aware robot just starting out. As the two stories unfold, so too does Newitz’s vision of a 22nd-century Earth altered by economic upheavals, global warming and climate change, and AI evolutions. The powerhouse blurb from Neal Stephenson on the front of my edition—“Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”—is as intriguing as it is exciting (not to mention the vague but squee-worthy blurb from Gibson himself on the back!). More on that later.

I picked this book up in the hopes it would get me out of a two-book slump, and I wasn’t disappointed. Newitz’s narration is crisp and clear. I love how she paints the picture of a very different society without descending too far into extraneous exposition. The nature of her ideas has a strong Doctorowish quality to them, but she eschews Doctorow’s tendency towards overly-didactic hypothetical conversations (this is not a criticism of Doctorow, mind you, but there is a time and place, Cory). Autonomous is a short book, but it feels like a lot happens and it covers a lot of ground. I love that.

Our initial protagonist is Jack (Judith) Chen. Once an ambitious grad student, she realized in her younger days that her path lay outside academia. After a protest leads to a stint of jail time, Jack disappears, resurfacing as an anti-patent pirate who reverse-engineers drugs so she can sell them to people who can get them in the hands of those who can’t afford the pharma versions. Jack is a high-tech biohacking Robin Hood, in essence, though she is no saint. I quite enjoy how Newitz unfolds Jack’s backstory through flashback throughout the novel, revealing enough to interest us and provide insight into her character without distracting us from the main thrust of Jack’s plot.

Soon we meet the flip side of the coin. Eliasz and Paladin are enforcement agents who have jurisdiction to go after people infringing upon patents (among other things). One is an experienced Polish man and the other is a military-grade robot with a dead person’s brain in her carapace that is basically just for facial recognition processing. As they begin working together, they also develop a close personal relationship. Eliasz expresses an attraction towards Paladin that is mixed up with his misinterpretations of Paladin’s gender. (Paladin nominally uses he for the first part of the book, then switches to she mid-way through, for reasons I’m not going to get into here, which is why I’m using she/her throughout my review.) This allows Newitz to comment on some interesting ideas around sexuality, gender, and embodiment. Although she never goes as deep, perhaps, as I’d enjoy, there are some nuggets in there worth exploring.

These two plots take a long time to dovetail, but the parallelism is entertaining in and of itself. Newitz is exploring issues of identity and autonomy (surprising, I know) from different sides. Jack nominally has so much autonomy, being essentially a free spirit and a free agent, yet she is constrained by resources, by having to keep out of reach of law enforcement, and by the ghosts of her past. Paladin, in her capacity as an IPC agent, has more resources and, essentially, a license to kill, yet she lacks true autonomy—her very memories are accessible to IPC botadmins, stored as they are in the cloud. On a wider level, mostly in the background and occasionally intersecting with the main plot, we glimpse a society that allows human indenture, sells enfranchisement and citizenship packages, and has basically rethought what it means to be a participatory member of our society.

As a result, Autonomous ponders what power we will have and the form our social capital will take if we enter a world where governments are fading-to-nonexistent and corporations vie with economic coalitions for control over the fabric of our society. This is the type of science fiction I love, and I appreciate how Newitz tries to walk the fine line between gushing and speculating and extrapolating like the sci-fi–loving nerd she is and dangling just enough tantalizing ideas in front of the reader to get us gushing and speculating and extrapolating about it. This is the novel’s strength: it offloads much of the cognitive load onto the reader but does so in a way that is neither demanding nor disappointing.

I want to return to that Stephenson blurb. Taken at face-value—which is, I’m sure, how the marketing department would like you to take it—this is quite a coup, this comparison between Autonomous and Neuromancer, arguably one of the touchstones of cyberpunk. Yet let’s step back for a moment and consider another interpretation: Stephenson says this book is “to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”. If you’ve read Neuromancer, you know that its depiction of cyberspace is nothing like what we ended up with online. Gibson’s novel was prophetic in some ways, certainly, but it was highly limited to a very 1980s vision of what a networked society could be. The elapsed decades have since demonstrated marked divergence with Gibsonian cyberspace.

And so, Stephenson is doubly correct here. Autonomous, like Neuromancer, presents a breathtaking look at how the relatively new fields of biohacking and autonomous AI might work in the future. At the same time, it is a prophetic look constrained by the current situation of our early twenty-first century. I have no doubt that we’ll look back at Autonomous 30 years from now and see that our society has already diverged a great deal from what Newitz shows us here.

This is not a criticism—it would be odd to ding an author for not being able to predict the future, unless, of course, they are claiming some kind of psychic ability. Rather, it’s a reflection upon and reminder of how our perceptions of science fiction change over time. The people who read Neuromancer when it came out had a very different reaction to me reading it as a 19-year-old in 2009 who pretty much matured on our own version of cyberspace. Similarly, I’d be very interested in what future readers think of Autonomous as technology like 3D-printing, self-driving cars, and organically-grown limb replacements becomes more ubiquitous.

Newitz’s debut novel provides me with a great mixture of story, food for thought, and characters. There are times when I think she could have done more. And I’m ambivalent about Eliasz and Paladin’s ending—part of me thinks it is corny and trite, and the other part thinks it’s kind of sweet, and an innovative twist on an old trope. I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on this. On the whole, though, Autonomous is definitely worth picking up if this is the kind of fiction you’re into.

My major complaint about Warcross is that it was just over too soon. I guess that’s what happens, however, when you read a book in one day because youMy major complaint about Warcross is that it was just over too soon. I guess that’s what happens, however, when you read a book in one day because you can’t put it down. Marie Lu’s story of a teenage hacker-turned-bounty-hunter at the end of her rope getting hired by the world’s richest game designer on the eve of the game’s annual championships is simply enthralling.

Before I continue to gush about the story, though, we need to pause for just a moment and appreciate this cover by Cream3D and Theresa Evangelista, because it is 💯. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the cover for the cover’s sake. The colours, the use of dimension, the play on the “cross” in Warcross—I love covers that don’t feature people and do cool things with the title, and this ticks both those boxes. It is phenomenal, and even if this book were complete garbage, this cover alone deserves all the awards.

Anyway.

Warcross reminds me a lot of William Gibson—but more so the Blue Ant trilogy than Sprawl. Despite the obvious resemblance the Warcross experience has with cyberspace, it’s more that Hideo and Emika’s relationship—at least at first—reminds me of Hubertus and Cayce. The enigmatic, enormously wealthy patron who is just ahead of the curve hires a young and savvy woman who knows exactly how to do what he needs done. Like Gibson, Lu anticipates how a revolutionary interactive technology might alter not just one facet of society (gaming) but all of our society. It’s not exactly extrapolation, but it is a good, hard look into the ways in which we take up new digital technologies to make our lives easier.

I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly what it is about this book that got me hooked so quickly. It might be Emika’s incorrigibility. She has gone through a lot in her short life, yet she isn’t bitter. There are times when she might verge on Mary Sueishness, but I think Lu largely avoids this. Emika makes enough mistakes, and it’s clear, especially by the end, that she isn’t going to “save the day”. It might also be the adrenaline-infused pacing of Warcross: literally never a dull moment here. I don’t know if Lu wrote it this way or if an editor took a laser-powered axe to these chapters, but this thing is impressively lean. If it doesn’t advance the plot, it isn’t on the page. The exposition is exquisitely balanced.

The eponymous game and its environment is also stunning. And I say this as someone who doesn’t visualize when reading, so I really have no idea what it looks like. But the description makes this sound like some kind of VR Overwatch, which I think is enough for most people to go on. When you have a story heavily based around sporting scenes like we have here, sometimes I lose track of what’s going on (I’m sorry: I could never really grok the Quidditch action in Harry Potter). But this reminded me a little of Ender’s Game. Maybe it helped that Emika always had ulterior missions while in the game.

I wish I could give Warcross five stars, because I really did love it that much. Alas, the ending disappointed me ever so slightly. Firstly, it was super predictable. I figured out who Zero was fairly early on. That alone wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Secondly, the revelations around the NeuroLink were also predictable. The moment Emika explained how it worked, way back at the beginning of the book, I put it down for a moment and swallowed, because I knew exactly where this was going, and it’s the thing about brain–computer interfaces that most freaks me out. If we get them working in my lifetime, I’m definitely going to be the dinosaur who refuses to put one into his brain. (The difficulty, of course, is that if we introduce them via wearables like the glasses here, then maybe I won’t even realize it until it’s too late.) Finally, the secondary characters could have used some more development. This is a minor quibble—Lu makes some attempts at this—but that leanness I mentioned earlier cuts both ways, and sometimes it felt like it was just all-Emika’s story, all the time.

If anything, I quite respect Lu’s decisions around the ending, and in particular, the way it changes things between Emika and Hideo. Their romance felt like the weakest and least welcome subplot in this book, and for a large portion, I was just kind of wishing it wasn’t happening—it felt so contrived. I’m shipping Emika/Hammie. Nevertheless, I admit that the romance makes a tragic kind of sense given the revelations at the end.

As this is apparently the first in a series, Lu has positioned the characters for an intriguing second act. I’ll be there for it. Critiques aside, Warcross was such a blast that I made extra time in my day to finish it all immediately. I just didn’t want to leave this universe of Lu’s. I wanted to watch Emika be a smart hacker, a brilliant coder, a cool-headed gamer, and a savvy super-spy. This is an exhilarating and exciting journey, and it’s one I’d highly recommend to anyone who enjoys books about virtual reality, gaming competitions, or girls who code (to kick ass).

When Dimple Met Rishi is just plain adorable. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

I picked this up on a whim while at Chapters, because it was in a displayWhen Dimple Met Rishi is just plain adorable. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

I picked this up on a whim while at Chapters, because it was in a display of new releases and I’d heard a little but of buzz about it from Twitter. I needed something nice and “light” compared to, say, Walkaway, but obviously didn’t want to go so far as to read a book that didn’t start with W or didn’t have an orange-themed cover. So this was the logical choice.

Sandhya Menon has created what is essentially a very formulaic YA romantic comedy, yet she has imbued with so much genuine humour and clever characterization that it just feels good. This isn’t the most original or even the best-written book I’ve read lately, but it’s definitely one of the most enjoyable. It has all the feels, in the best possible way.

I was surprised, when I went to read other reviews, how many people hate Dimple. I guess I grok it, but to me she’s just … human. She’s young and headstrong but also inexperienced; she has these very intense, focused goals, and when she discovers she wants something (romance) that she had told herself she wasn’t looking for at this moment, she struggles to process and integrate this into her life. So of course she’s going to make mistakes.

I didn’t actually care about the romance all that much. This might be an odd thing to say for a book that is literally romance, but, well, that’s generally how I roll with these books anyway. I couldn’t care less whether they end up together. The whole app competition was much more interesting for me, and I do wish we had seen more of that. The structure of the romance, its various reversals, etc., felt pretty standard and easy to anticipate. That’s not bad, of course, but if you are looking for something that is going to have you on the edge of the seat with twists and turns you won’t see coming … When Dimple Met Rishi is not it.

Instead, this book is heartwarming. It doesn’t offer easy answers—despite Dimple and Rishi seemingly being fated to be together, given all the various events that conspire to push them in that direction, Menon offers us no promises about whether they will remain together. This is a message I’m seeing more and more in YA books, and I’m liking it. I’m liking the acknowledgement that 17- and 18-year-olds don’t need their whole life sorted out and the recognition that it’s possible the person you’re dating and/or attracted to at this age is not your soulmate or the person you’re going to spend the majority of your life with. Dimple and Rishi have some good conversations about these types of things, as they dance around whether or not they should try being together in the face of the reasons they shouldn’t—and it’s these conversations, rather than the standard plot points that bookend them, that I find so good.

There’s this moment prior to the climax where everything blows up. I won’t spoil it, but basically Dimple has a false epiphany and pushes Rishi away, as one half of the love interests are wont to do in these things. The resulting fallout might seem a little contrived, but the entire process of Dimple’s false epiphany makes so much sense to me. She isn’t have a crisis about whether or not she loves Rishi. When you construct your sense of self around being one thing, and then someone comes along and shows you that you might want something that is not part of that identity, it’s really a crisis of self. (I suppose Rishi went through something similar, but to be honest, even though he shared the narration of the book, I never felt as close to him as I did to Dimple.)

I said at the opening of this review that When Dimple Met Rishi shouldn’t work, but it does. That’s because the more I think about it, the more I can recognize the formula at work here. Normally that would detract from my experience. So when I keep highlighting that here, it isn’t criticism—it’s praise that in spite of this, Menon’s writing and characterization captivates and entertains. This is how you breathe new life into old tropes. I can’t comment on the representation of Indian culture or of being the children of immigrants from India, but I like that characters with these backgrounds at least show up in this type of story. I also really like that Menon attempts to give Dimple a female friendship that is resilient despite numerous rough patches.

When Dimple Met Rishi energized me. It refreshed me. There’s things that it could have done better, parts that could be smoother or better constructed. It’s not necessarily the right book forever, but it was the right book for right now, and sometimes that matters most.

—Celaena intrigues me as a character. I’m not sure I like her that much…. I very much respect an author who can create an unlikable protagonist and make me enjoy their journey and their story, and that is the case here. I didn’t necessarily like Celaena as a person, but I cared what happened to her.—

—I also liked the positive female friendship between Celaena and Nehemia.—

—As much as I liked the friendship, the romance part of the book did little for me … it seemed superfluous—you could have cropped out the romance elements here and still have a fine book.—

—at the very end of the book, we learn he has a much deeper game. He’s much more involved in what is happening in Erilea and in the supernatural aspects of the story, and I really liked this glimpse. It leaves me even more excited to read the next book—I’m not picking it up right away, but obviously it’ll be sometime soon.

And now, the continuation.

(Switch back to your normal “I am reading Ben’s review” voice now.)

“Sometime soon” has arrived four months on, which is actually very fast in Ben reading terms for carrying on with your typical series. I have to say I started to hesitate. In the elapsed time I’ve seen some criticism of Sarah J. Maas and her handling of portrayals of sexuality, etc., more so in the latest books of her other fantasy series. Still, I did buy … all … the books … so I figured I should keep going, at least for now.

Crown of Midnight picks up a few months after Throne of Glass ends. Celaena Sardothien is now firmly entrenched as the King of Adarlan’s royal assassin, aka King’s Champion. She is supposed to be killing his enemies. Is she? Don’t be silly. She’s trying to figure out his endgame, trying to connect the dots between his successful conquest of most of Erilea and the disappearance of magic. She’s trying to be a scholar and a warrior and a mage and a rogue, like a one-person DnD party, and it’s not working out for her. Along the way, there is also some smooching and some murder. Maybe not in that order. And some fairly predictable high fantasy shenanigans.

Here’s a quick summary of how I feel about this sequel versus the first book. I still like Celaena a lot as the main character and protagonist. I still enjoy much of Maas’ writing and characterization. However, I am less excited by the overall story and its arc.

I’m starting to see why Maas and her protege Susan Dennard are building such a die-hard fanbase and taking parts of the fantasy readership by storm. They remind me a lot of Brandon Sanderson (to whose Mistborn series I also came late and have, to some extent, similarly soured upon). They’re writing in a way that recapitulates a lot of the high and epic fantasy tropes that are the bedrock of this corner of the genre. My first fantasy love was really Eddings’ Belgariad, chased with Modesitt, Jr.’s Recluce saga. While some newcomers to the field have sought to deconstruct, play with, and really innovate these tropes, plenty of newcomers, including heavyweights like Rothfuss, are trying to find new ways to tape into fantasy fans’ yearning for these faux-medieval fairytales.

I’m not here to pass a value judgement on these differing approaches, mind you. I’ve enjoyed books from both schools, and from the various schools elsewhere in the fantasy galaxy. As much as I love some of the clever and questioning work coming from avant-garde authors, I freely admit that I’m spending a lot of time trying to find new releases that chase that old-school fantasy dragon. Yet even when authors like Maas and Dennard give me something I like, there’s something holding me back from truly loving it. It just doesn’t necessarily ring new.

So, Crown of Midnight ticks so many boxes. Magic system? Check. Inter-kingdom warfare? Check. Complex plots involving a mixture of prophecy versus free will and a Big Bad playing a Xanatos Gambit with an unclear endgame? Hella check. If the first book felt a little too much like setting up the universe, this one pays off a lot in terms of transforming the story into a more epic adventure. Although Celaena doesn’t really live the capital in this book, her actions and the reactions to what she does have repercussions felt across the continent. The ending, too, demonstrates that Maas is not afraid to shake everything up in order to advance the plot and deliver something fresh for the next book.

And yet … I feel like I’ve seen this all before.

This is the main problem I had with Crown of Midnight. I feel like, if I were coming to this series much younger, as a very new fantasy fan, then I would be in love with it. This would be my Belgariad. It certainly has those elements to it. So it isn’t so much that these books are bad per se, as I am much more jaded. I’m not trying to sound hipster here, just pragmatic. We all come to a genre with certain stories that of our time, in the same way that a certain demographic grew up with Harry Potter and then discovered Narnia. I saw most of the twists here coming, whether it was what happened with Chaol, and his ultimate decisions regarding his father, or the secret of Celaena’s identity. The writing is (in the case of the Wyrdmarks, literally) on the wall. None of this detracts from the quality of the book, but it did detract from my personal enjoyment. Crown of Midnight is a very nice work of fantasy from a technical perspective, but as a reader I came away yawning.

It has been nearly a year since I read Am I Normal Yet?, the first book in Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy. That was Evie’s story of her struggIt has been nearly a year since I read Am I Normal Yet?, the first book in Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy. That was Evie’s story of her struggle with OCD and related issues. With some nice summer weather (finally), I decided it was time to tackle the sequel, wherein Amber spends a summer in America, working at a summer camp run by her mother and stepfather. I’m not as big a fan of Amber as I am of Evie, so it was hard to let the latter’s voice go. Nevertheless, Bourne again demonstrates her pitch-perfect characterization of teenagers and their parents and her mastery of the ambiguous happy ending.

Trigger warnings for the book and this review: alcoholism and child abuse/neglect.

I charged Amber with the crime of not being Evie at the beginning of this review. She’s guilty of it—but that’s a good thing, right? Nothing is worse than an author who can’t write characters with unique voices. So it’s good that Bourne can write more than one UK teenager. Obviously, since Amber doesn’t share Evie’s anxiety and compulsiveness, she is more whimsical in how she behaves. She drinks and generally gets up into mischief … yet, paradoxically, there is steel beneath this carefree exterior. Amber is afraid of losing control as a result of her experiences with her mother.

My sympathies lie, for the most part, with Amber. After all, in addition to being the protagonist, she is also a teenager, while her mom is a parent. Nevertheless, despite the first-person narration, Bourne still manages to portray Amber and her mom’s fraught relationship with depth and complexity. We see her mom’s pain, the daily struggle of a recovering alcoholic—but we see it through the eyes of the child whom it has affected so dearly. And, yeah, Amber says some harsh things, does things that might not be advisable—but it all makes sense in the context of what she has gone through. How Hard Can Love Be? neither sugarcoats nor sensationalizes the life of a recovering alcoholic and her estranged teenage daughter: Bourne carefully distills the truth, for all its vinegar.

It’s amusing watching a UK author write about the States. Aided by her travels across the country, Bourne includes enough geography and some rich descriptions of Yosemite National Park. She also has a lot of fun in the vocabulary and cultural differences between the US and the UK (“poo-dank” hehe). I think she slips up at one point—she has Kyle talk about “year groups”, which should be grades in the US—but for the most part, the “British fish in American waters” trope is strong here. To her credit, Bourne doesn’t overuse it: Amber spends most of the novel at the camp run by her mother and stepfather, so we don’t see her interacting too much with the rest of American society.

I thought I would miss the rest of the Spinster Club dearly given that an ocean separates the other two from Amber. Fortunately, Bourne’s use of Skype chats and emails remedies this. Lottie and Evie’s distinct voices, as they war over the keyboard or eat cheesy snacks on webcam, are such a delight. Once again, it just feels so good to hear these three distinct and diverse female teenage voices in a novel that is not just feminist but about feminism. If Am I Normal Yet? is an intro to feminism, then How Hard Can Love Be? is the next-level course that introduces some more complicated topics, like the Female Chauvinist Pig.

Melody is such an interesting character, and I love how Bourne sets her up as a foil to explicitly deconstruct the “bimbo cheerleader villain” who so often appears in stories like this. You know, the one who robs the less-conventionally-attractive protagonist of her conventionally-attractive paramour, at least until the climax of the book? Bourne subverts this all here, and she does it in a very open way, pointing out to her presumably teenage audience the traps that women fall into as a result of the patriarchy.

Probably the most resonant note of the entire book, however, is when Lottie and Evie attempt to persuade Amber to go for it with Kyle, despite her fears over getting hurt. I so cannot wait to read the next book and just be inside Lottie’s head; here’s what she has to say:

Lottie’s face was read, and she punched the air. “It won’t make the world change for the better! It won’t make me change for the better. I won’t grow, if I just accept what’s what. The world won’t grow. The same unfair shit will just keep happening, and yes it’s easier to roll over and say, ‘That’s too hard and annoying, I just want to eat some pie’ but it’s not the right thing…”

Evie smiled slowly. “So you gotta fight for your right to be ruddy miserable?”

Lottie patted her shoulder. “Yes! Exactly. Because because because IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.”

Although I don’t entirely agree with the sentiments expressed in this section of the book, I love that Bourne tries to tease out the distinctions between doing what makes one “happy” (for some value thereof) and doing “the right thing”. This are not always the same, but sometimes we are told that they are (usually when a company wants to sell us something). Amber’s fear of getting hurt in the future is stopping her from growing and changing and making herself (and potentially her world) a better place in the present. This is a powerful moment, a powerful scene, and it’s really well done—as is, let’s face it, the rest of the book.

How Hard Can Love Be? establishes in my mind a definite trend for Holly Bourne’s endings. She likes happy endings, but she also loves realism. I’ve seen that in both of the other novels of hers that I’ve read. Bourne likes to show her readers that the possibility always exists to be all right, but she also reminds us that life never promises you’ll stay that way. I like books that are optimistic while still reminding us that there are no promises, that nothing is ever a given.

So why not 5 stars like the first book of this series? Honestly, it’s just my preference for Evie as a narrator over Amber, and my preference for Evie’s adventures over Amber’s romance. It’s just not my thing, and watching Amber fall for Kyle isn’t my cup of tea. If it’s yours, and you like everything else I’ve said, then you’re going to love this book. Bourne’s writing is tight and smart and compassionate; her voice is so valuable to YA,and I hope books like this keep coming.

I went into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall conjecturing that Anne Brontë would prove to be the underrated sister, and my conjecture was right. Although II went into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall conjecturing that Anne Brontë would prove to be the underrated sister, and my conjecture was right. Although I love and appreciate Jane Eyre, and I can see why others love and appreciate Wuthering Heights, where is the love for Anne? Charlotte and Emily get to become household names, more or less, their most famous works easily recognizable even by people who will never read them. But mention Agnes Grey or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and you’ll often get a blank stare. It’s not fair, because this book is pure gold right here. Indeed, I’ll venture that it’s raunchier than Jane Eyre and takes even more risks than Wuthering Heights; I thoroughly disagree with Margaret Smith’s claim in the introduction that Anne lacks “mastery” of the novel form. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has not quite claimed my adoration in the way many of Hardy or Eliot’s works have, but it still has its own magic.

Let’s start with discussing the narration, because it’s something that jumped out at me almost immediately. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an interesting example of the Victorian novel. Like many of its brethren, it is epistolary in nature. However, the initial narrator is not the eponymous tenant, as I expected it would be. Instead, the framing narrative is a series of letters written by Gilbert Markham to his friend, J. Halford. Only after eavesdropping of Shakespearean dimensions does Gilbert confront Helen and obtain the journals in her own hand, which he subsequently transcribes (without a photocopier, yikes) for Halford’s private amusement (great guy, this Gilbert). Thus the middle half of the novel transpires from Helen’s perspective, and is, in essence, a flashback that explains and justifies her presence at Wildfell Hall. After her journal concludes, the novel returns to Gilbert’s perspective, where he reacts to what he has learned and tries his best to make amends.

This split narration allows Brontë to showcase her ability to write with both male and female voices. She aptly portrays a young country squire whose chief concerns are managing his family’s property, socializing, and keeping one eye open for marriageable young ladies in his social circle. Gilbert is kind but not particularly deep; he is mostly a foil to the scurrilous Arthur Huntingdon. Whatever his character, though, he is most striking because Brontë captures a young man’s voice so well. You see him confess his attractions to Eliza Millward, to Helen, even as he muses on how inappropriate these might be. Brontë depicts his insensitivity to (or insensibility of) Helen’s awkward social status as the reclusive tenant of Wildfell Hall. Gilbert understand propriety but sometimes allows his passion and youth to override his sensibilities.

When we switch to Helen’s voice, we see propriety reinforced by a bulwark of staunch, salvationist Christian belief. Helen is quite moral, a characteristic both demonstrated by her actions and remarked upon by numerous characters, who frequently liken her to an angelic being. It seems important to Brontë that we perceive Helen as faultless, at least in the case of her marriage. Helen perseveres in her marriage to Huntingdon even when it becomes almost unbearable; she acknowledges she misjudged his initial character, but she sees it as her duty to stay entwined with him. She only leaves him, ultimately, for the sake of her son; ensuring he is raised properly is a higher duty than remaining with her husband.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has me itching to read Middlemarch again, which also features marriages that turn out unhappily. This is a recurring motif in many a classic Victorian novel, particularly those by women—probably because, with divorce requiring an Act of Parliament, marriage was quite a shackling state for both parties, but men were allowed to be much looser in their behaviour and dalliances than women could, if they wanted their reputations to remain intact. Brontë certainly remarks on this double standard, though she doesn’t go so far as to criticize it in the way that Eliot does. Multiple men offer Helen an opportunity to do as Huntingdon does; she rebukes each offer with harsh criticism. Brontë would prefer neither partner to be unfaithful. Both Alice Lowborough and Arthur Huntingdon are punished for the infidelity with death; the former dies “in penury” and alone while the latter has at least his faithful wife by his side. Only characters who take steps to reform, like Lord Lowborough or Ralph Hattersley, are allowed to live and prosper. This, along with Helen’s constant and consistent upbraiding of all the men she meets, from Hargrave to Huntingdon to Gilbert, creates a strong current of Christian morality throughout the book. Therefore, Brontë is reflecting on the tragedy of women essentially being forced into unhappy and unfaithful marriages, but she is also promulgating a moral duty, on the part of both men and women, to behave better to each other and make these relationships work.

I love the gradual way in which Brontë shows Helen’s marriage deteriorating. First we have the actual courting, of course, with various and sundry characters opining one way or the other on the sense of marrying Huntingdon. In this society, this is perhaps the most important decision a woman will make. Across many such Georgian and Victorian novels, we often see that marrying for love does not, in fact, work out very well. The characters whose voices we initially ignore for their focus on status, or wealth, or simple propriety, turn out to be prescient in their assessment of the quality of a romantic match. Yet Helen succumbs, the marriage goes ahead, and then it starts to unravel.

The warning signs, the rumblings, oh, the portents! He rushes her through their Continental honeymoon, because he had seen all the sights before! He abandons her frequently for months at a time to gamble and carouse in London. He is slow to love or appreciate their child, because young Arthur diverts Helen’s attentions from him. Yet Brontë true masterstrokes come in his transformation from rogue to outright villain. He is openly unfaithful, encourages his child to drink and swear, etc. These scenes are mild by our standards, but they are outright scandalous by Victorian standards, to the point where reviewers remarked that the book might not be suitable for ladies’ eyes, such distress it might cause! In other words, Brontë pulls no punches in her portrayal of an emotionally abusive relationship. It is both disconcerting and delightful, in a literary sense, to see this happen before our eyes.

This is where I disagree with the estimable introduction writer, Margaret Smith. She claims that Brontë shows us Helen through Gilbert’s eyes, but not vice versa. Moreover, we might “forget” Gilbert altogether in the middle of the novel because we don’t see him reacting as he reads and transcribes Helen’s journal. I’d argue, however, that we don’t need to see Gilbert through Helen’s eyes. This isn’t a flaw in Brontë’s writing but a reasonable decision. We know what Helen thinks of Gilbert through her conduct around him, through the fact that she gives him these journals in the first place. Similarly, we don’t need to remember Gilbert in the middle part of the novel. His reaction at the end is sufficient.

I concur with Smith that the ending is somewhat more sanguine than one might expect given the tragic body of this story. It all shakes out a little too well, a little too conveniently. Far be it from me to want a tragic ending (though, I do like some of Hardy’s more tragic tales…). Nevertheless, after attempting to depict what she views as an unacknowledged reality within her society, Brontë opts for some marital hyperbole. I don’t see this as diminishing the power of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but the last few chapters are probably the least interesting parts of the book. This is a shame, because there is interesting commentary to be had on Gilbert and his understanding of his social status vis-à-vis Helen, whose situation changes dramatically in the last few chapters. It’s all just so rushed, though.

There is a temptation—I certainly succumbed to it, at times—for modern readers to view books like this through a haughty lens. We snicker, or react with condescending horror, at the constraints that women faced in this society. For women in Helen, Millicent, Esther’s positions, marriage was often the only respectable escape, and marriage was, if not forced on one, at least foisted upon one like an unlooked-for extra helping of gruel. Brontë depicts this admirably, and we are entertained and a little shocked. But I have to ask—is it really all that better these days?

I mean, yes, women have the appearance of more liberty in our society now. But we still see women marrying men because they view it as an “out” from their present situation. We see women staying with men who are abusive, or at the very least unhealthy for them, for a panoply of reasons, ranging from children to, as Helen does, wanting to care for the partner who has let them down so completely. In many situations, women who leave their husbands still face censure; women who are unfaithful face a double standard compared to men who sleep around … the way we talk about sex and romance and relationships has definitely changed since Anne Brontë’s time, but the morality and mores seem quite similar. Judgment is swift for women who do not toe the line.

So that’s what The Tenant of Wildfell Hall left me thinking about, not the society Brontë depicts for us in the book, but the one we currently inhabit. Feminism has made great strides, but we have much further to go before Helen’s situation seems almost too alien to fathom. Until then, this book still has incredible relevance to readers of today; it is also brilliantly, compassionately, empathetically written. Anne Brontë has as much skill, if not more, than her two sisters, and a truly just society would put all three Brontës into the literary spotlight. They are sublime, and this book is sublime, and I highly recommend it.

A Criminal Magic hooked me from the start. A friend gave this to me for my birthday (apparently it was on my to-read list, not that I’d remember). I sA Criminal Magic hooked me from the start. A friend gave this to me for my birthday (apparently it was on my to-read list, not that I’d remember). I started it on Saturday, and 25 pages in I texted her to let her know she had picked well. Lee Kelly’s story of sorcerers labouring under a magic Prohibition in an alternative 1926 is just captivating. From parallel plot-lines to a careful, judicious use of magic, Kelly tells a story that is about love but isn’t necessarily a romance, a story that is about loss but isn’t necessarily about revenge, a story that is about rolling with the punches when you realize the universe is going to keep knocking you down.

The story opens with Joan Kendrick, an eighteen-year-old who has recently lost her mother. We learn more about the circumstances of her mother’s death, and why Joan feels so guilty, fairly soon into the book. For now, though, Joan reluctantly picks up the mantle of her magic and heads into Washington, D.C. with a stranger who is almost certainly a mobster because this is her family’s last chance to make enough money to avoid losing their house. Joan soon finds herself in a competition and experiment to narrow down 15 candidates into a circle of 7 sorcerers—all for the purpose of making better shine, of course.

Because in Kelly’s alternative 1926, it isn’t booze that’s illegal: it’s sorcery, and the intoxicating byproduct sorcerer’s shine. I love this premise. I also love that Kelly doesn’t spend too much time explaining how her magic works. We learn enough to understand plot points (magic doesn’t last longer than a day) and receive tantalizing hints that there is much more to learn, that magic is a far deeper and more intense phenomenon than this story can explore. Rather than falling down the rabbithole, however, and providing too much exposition or tangents that don’t make sense, Kelly wisely reins herself in and keeps things focused on the action.

The other protagonist, Alex Danfrey, is also a sorcerer down on his luck. With his father imprisoned for smuggling, Alex joins the Federal Prohibition Unit to use his skills for the government. But he has a chip on his shoulder and an ego to match, and he soon gets in trouble and gets manoeuvred into taking an undercover job. He finds himself infiltrating the same gang that Joan is working with. They don’t meet until well into the novel, and even then their lives only cross occasionally for another few chapters—but the payoff is great.

Sometimes, when an author splits the story equally across two characters and (eventually intersecting) plots like this, I’m not happy. I end up preferring one story to another and resenting the author for switching gears on me. That’s not the case here: I was always happy to return to the other’s story, with Kelly leaving me just enough from the previous protagonist to feel worried but not so much that I was resentful.

Kelly’s gangsters and mobsters are not lovable scoundrels, nor are they cartoon villains. They are dark, twisted, often violent people. Gunn comes across as so tightly-wound in his malevolence, with the long game he is playing and the way his interactions with Joan feel like he can barely contain an envy-inspired rage. Yet I appreciate, and frankly, am relieved, that Kelly never resorts to cheap devices (read: coercion, sexual violence, needlessly killing a character) just to demonstrate someone’s villainy. The same goes for Boss McEvoy, who enters the story with a reputation as a kingpin but whose role shifts markedly as we learn more about his operation.

Just when I thought I had this book figured out and could predict the ending, Kelly throws a few twists in there. I expected the sting not to go off as planned, of course. What I didn’t expect, though, was the way in which Joan so brilliantly comes into her own. This was totally my mistake, because Kelly foreshadows it so plainly in the first act of the novel when she is competing against/with other sorcerers! She reprises this crowning moment of awesome in the climax, seizing control of the moment when no one else will and making snap decisions with far-reaching consequences. If you had to make me choose between the two protagonists, Joan would be my favourite, hands down.

Though this book has elements of romance to it, I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s its principal component. I don’t want to go into spoilers for the end, so let’s just say that I’m pleased by the way Kelly resolves Joan and Alex’s situation. It’s a less conventional, though by no means an original, solution, and I like the tension that it creates. She sets us up for a sequel, which I’d happily read—yet if no sequel is ever forthcoming, I would still be satisfied with this book as a standalone.

In the end, I suspect that some people will see the magic or the plot or the characters here as somewhat shallow. I get those objections. Kelly’s narration and dialogue don’t always make the scene come alive. Yet I can’t deny that I was hooked from the get-go, and any flaws I can see in this book I was happy to ignore for the duration of reading it. A Criminal Magic is just a delightful, suspenseful story of mobs and magic and making hard choices not because you’re hard but because you’re only trying to survive.

There’s a clever tweet going around out there advocating for a moratorium on words like “throne” and “crown” in YA book titles, and I totally get why.There’s a clever tweet going around out there advocating for a moratorium on words like “throne” and “crown” in YA book titles, and I totally get why. A Crown of Wishes is one of those densely generic titles that does a terrible job at hinting about the contents of the book. In this particular case, it is at least appropriate, in that the book does feature both crowns (metaphorical and literal) and wishes (um … metaphorical and literal?). This book just came out last week, and I received an ebook through NetGalley thanks to St. Martin’s Press. I’m glad that it is a standalone companion to The Star-Touched Queen, because after that experience I wasn’t keen on continuing Maya’s story.

For those who have read Maya’s book, this one follows her half-sister Gauri. Maya makes a small appearance much later. Some of the setting and mythical beings are similar. That’s about all you need to know.

Adult now, Gauri has failed in an attempt to usurp the throne of Bharata from her brother Skanda, who is a cruel and negligent ruler. Exiled to be executed in a foreign kingdom, Gauri instead finds herself swept up into a supernatural “Tournament of Wishes” as the partner of Prince Vikram, who is determined to find a way to claim true power for his throne instead of being a puppet for Ujijain’s council. This tournament takes Gauri and Vikram to Alaka, a supernatural domain ruled by Lord Kubera and Lady Kauveri, who preside capriciously over the tournament.

Gauri and Vikram have diametrically opposed personalities, of course, in the kind of way that makes them great complements to each other, especially in a tournament that is mostly a battle of wits. It is blatantly obvious from the start that this is a romance, that they are meant to be together, no matter how many obstacles Roshani Chokshi throws in their way. This setup does feel a little clichéd in that sense, just because everything is so obvious, right down to the best friend teasing Gauri about being so obstinate and resistant to what’s right in front of her face. Nevertheless, compared to Maya and Amar’s “romance” from the first book, this one is at least more gradual and organic within the story. Gauri doesn’t suddenly get a feeling that she is meant to be with Vikram; they have to build trust and earn each other’s respect.

I liked Gauri. She is so strong but also so inflexible; she would break rather than bend, and it’s this brittleness that is embodied later in the glass … well, no spoilers. This Tournament of Wishes is, as with any wish-powered fairytale, all about learning what you should really be wishing for (if you should really wish at all). Gauri has spent her entire existence, such as it is so far, growing up with certain ideals of strength, influenced by her harem and Mother Dhina, as well as stories from Maya, and her companion, Nalini. She has mastered the arts of cosmetics and clothing to enhance and broadcast her beauty when necessary; she will also fight and kill as required. And I like that when the story begins, Gauri is alone, defeated. She played the game of thrones, if you will, and is about to encounter the “die” outcome rather than the win. She is a determined person, but she was not successful—until Vikram happens.

On the other hand, Vikram is self-assured almost to a fault. He is so confident in his intelligence and wit that he continually places himself and Gauri in harm’s way, sure that he can figure out a dodge. It’s going to get them killed one day, but until then, I suppose he is a very interesting character to live with. I want to say I liked him, sure, but as you can tell from the relative lengths of these two paragraphs, I find him much less interesting. He’s a smart dolt with a heart of gold, but beyond that … meh. Gauri could do better.

The setting and substance of A Crown of Wishes is once again fantastic and mythological. Chokshi brings in quite a nicely diverse set of beings to populate Alaka and threaten or aid our protagonist. She is very good at conjuring that fairytale-like atmosphere in which the correct course of action is not always the obvious one, that kind of atmosphere where riddles abound and confidence is often all it takes to win the day. I remember getting pretty frustrated with the magical realism of The Star-Touched Queen—less so here. However, the prose continues to shade towards a definite indigo, if not outright purple, in a way that doesn’t appeal to me.

My only dissatisfaction around the plot is really just that it feels too familiar. Not in the particulars, the characters or myths that Chokshi uses on the page, but in the overall themes and outcomes. Like the hero’s journey, the wishing-quest structure is an old and honourable one—but Chokshi doesn’t do much to stretch its boundaries or plumb its depths.

A Crown of Wishes, then, is a predictable tale of magic and romance told with competent and interesting characters. I liked it more than The Star-Touched Queen but not enough to jump up and down about it (and yes, for some books, that’s literally how I express my excitement while reading them).

Last year I picked up my first Holly Bourne book with Am I Normal Yet?. I had been hearing so much about Bourne and her Spinster Club trilogy from pLast year I picked up my first Holly Bourne book with Am I Normal Yet?. I had been hearing so much about Bourne and her Spinster Club trilogy from people I follow on Twitter and YouTube that I ordered all of her books—yes, all of them—on faith. I deliberately deferred her debut, Soulmates. Not only did I want to see what all the fuss around the Spinster Club was about, but I know that debut novels are often not representative of an author’s full talents. Nevertheless, I still wanted to tackle Soulmates before getting too deep into the rest of Bourne’s back catalogue, so this was the first book I started in 2017. It proved a good choice.

If you can’t guess what this book is about from its title, you’re trying to be too clever. It’s exactly what the title promises. Poppy Lawson is seventeen years old, and she thinks boys her age are stupid. Then she meets Noah, a “fit guitarist” and troubled child, and their connection is electric and panic-inducing. As Poppy and Noah circle one another and start dating, we learn that their status as soulmates is literally an existential crisis—that there is an entire secret society devoted to stopping soulmates from getting together, because natural disasters are the result. If Poppy and Noah don’t want to cause untold death and destruction, they can never be together. What’s a girl gotta—wait, sorry, wrong book….

Soulmates is strange fare. It walks that line between being science fiction and not, never quite deciding how far it wants go towards the tropes of that genre. It takes a very long time for the soulmate police subplot to intersect with the main narrative. Until about the last 50 pages of the book, one could theoretically excise the italicized scenes between the members of the soulmate police, remove this entire subplot, and the book could just be about a particularly charged romance between two teenagers. The weird weather would just be a footnote. And to be honest, I kind of did this, mentally, because Dr. Beaumont was the least satisfactory character for me. Everything from the descriptions of her to her behaviour felt quite one-dimensional.

In contrast, the main characters of Soulmates have the three-dimensional and vibrant personalities I would expect, having enjoyed Am I Normal Yet?’s dynamic cast. Poppy endeared herself to me at the end of chapter 3:

“Anyway, on that note, I’m going to go home now. Ruth, in the future, can you please refrain from using my illness as a pulling method?”

I turned on my heels and made for the door, forcing myself not to break into a run. In one last moment of courage or madness—whatever you want to call it—I turned back and examined the stunned looks on their faces.

“Oh, and watch out,” I added. “She’s had chlamydia twice.”

And I flicked my head round and walked out into the night.

Low blow, perhaps, a bit reminiscent of Mean Girls but so too was Ruth’s behaviour. And whereas in Mean Girls Cady was only pretending to befriend the Plastics, these girls are genuinely Poppy’s friend.

Bourne is really good at depicting the complicated, often messy, nuanced interactions that happen among adolescent girls. One moment, Ruth is using Poppy’s anxiety as a way to make herself look better in front of a boy—the next, Ruth is helping Poppy’s other friends super-glam her in preparation for a date (with same said boy, ironically). This is the kind of behaviour that is played for laughs and used by male writers to patronize women/girls or downplay female friendships—“them bitches be crazy” is a common refrain. Instead, Bourne pulls back the curtain ever so slightly to show what influences these relationships. Poppy herself is a very introspective character, reflecting on her own changing self—how she couldn’t care less about any of the boys her age, and now she is hot for Noah—as well as the personalities of her friends, from Lizzie’s buoyant and intrepid journalistic ambitions to Amanda’s surprising journey from shyness to assertiveness to Ruth’s overcompensation for her own insecurity.

As much as I liked Poppy’s forthright attitude, though, I confess Lizzie is my breakaway favourite. It’s just that every time she shows up, you know you’re going to have a good time with this scene. You know you’re going to laugh, because Lizzie cannot keep a secret, because she is so nosy, because despite these flaws, Lizzie is Poppy’s true best friend. And it is great that, in a novel that is essentially a YA romance, we are also getting all these positive depictions of female friendship.

OK, Ben, that’s all well and good, but what about that romance?

I suppose one benefit of the science-fictional angle in this plot is that, whether or not I believe in soulmates (I don’t), this story takes place in a world where soulmates exist. So we can set that aside and take it as read that Poppy and Noah are, indeed, meant for each other. Bourne tries to balance their expressed desire to “take it slow” with the hormones that continue to push them together and prod them into more and more physical moments of intimacy. As a result, the romance feels both very intense and not at all rushed—there is an inexorable, powerful development of Poppy’s understanding of herself, and herself in relation to this boy, that is quite compelling. While I can’t relate to this myself, I can only imagine that there will be some teenagers out there who can identify with the way Poppy expresses her hesitation, her mixed feelings about how quickly everything is moving, as well as how much she wants things to move so much faster.

And then there’s the ending. Sometimes I’m a sucker for happy endings, but I have to admit, tragedies do tend to be more my style. I’m not going to spoil the details, but let’s just say that Soulmates is not about two people living happily ever after. Bourne does not promise her audience that you’ll find The One and everything will work out OK. Rather, the theme here is that love—any kind of love, as I read it, be it romantic or otherwise—is a powerful influence on one’s character. Love changes you, sometimes in surprising ways. So whether a relationship is destined to be for a day, a year, or maybe forever, that person leaves a mark on you—and you on them. It rather reminds me of the song “For Good” from Wicked.

Soulmates is an admirable debut novel. It already contains precursors of things that Bourne goes on to explore more fully in her later books, such as mental health issues. Despite wrapping itself around an intriguing science-fictional premise, the narrative never really embraces that part of the story except in the final, feverish rush towards a climax near the end of the book. However, it mostly makes up for this by containing so many well-drafted characters. For a book that is, literally, about fated love, Soulmates is more remarkable for being so much more than romance.

This is a tough one, because I’m feeling pretty conflicted about A Room with a View. On one hand, I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it—despite being onlyThis is a tough one, because I’m feeling pretty conflicted about A Room with a View. On one hand, I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it—despite being only 220ish pages, it took me a long time to read, because I kept putting it down and looking for other, more interesting things to distract me. On the other hand, this is not a bad or poorly-written book. I can see what E.M. Forster is trying to do; I have seen other writers tell similar stories and knock my socks off. So what do George Eliot or Thomas Hardy have over Forster for me?

The plot is tedious and dull, and that’s likely my chief problem. Lucy Honeychurch is an eligible young lady on vacation in Italy with her chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. She ends up associating with an ensemble cast of characters, one of whom makes a move on her and kisses her (scandalous!). When she returns to England, she accepts the third marriage proposal from a persistent suitor who is not suited to her at all. Then the cad from Italy intersects her life again, and of course, there is suspense as Lucy tries to figure out if he has feelings for her (or if she has feelings for him) and if anyone other than Charlotte knows of, and could reveal, that Italian indiscretion.

It’s pretty standard fare as far as these types of stories go. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be many stakes here (beyond, perhaps, Lucy’s reputation were her out-of-school kissing to become common knowledge). The supporting characters, like Charlotte and Mrs Honeychurch and Freddy, Lucy’s brother, tend to be fairly flat, stock types who don’t offer much in the way of conflict. There is no one, central figure who dominates the page and stands out as a strong antagonist. Not even Cecil, who is indeed trying to project his idea of what a woman should be on to Lucy, really deserves such a label.

I felt like I was trapped in the prequel to an Agatha Christie mystery. I kept waiting for someone to drop dead and Poirot to burst onto the scene with Hastings and Japp, so he could start using his little grey cells to figure out that, egads, Emerson is no murderer—it was Mr Beebe all along! A good murder would really have lightened the mood, I think, and made A Room with a View more bearable. That or maybe some kind of natural disaster plunging the family into penury.

But no, Forster instead offers up a very bland look at English country life circa 1900, the British Empire riding high into the twentieth century with the rumblings of the Great War still far off on the European horizon. Lucy can go for a jaunt around Italy all she wants in the first half of the book, then noodle about her neighbourhood, playing tennis and mulling over marriage … and it’s just. so. boring. Maybe it’s my misanthropic distaste for socializing, but I just can’t bring myself to care or be interested in the quotidian happenings of these various characters.

The book picks up a little towards the end, and it certainly has some moments. Lucy has a pretty badass moment in Chapter 17, “Lying to Cecil”, when she explains why she has gone off marrying him:

“… When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you’re always protecting me.” Her voice swelled. “I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can’t I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman’s place! You despise my mother—I know you do—because she’s conventional and bothers over puddings; but, oh goodness!”—she rose to her feet—“conventional, Cecil, you’re that, for you may understand beautiful things, but you don’t know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I won’t be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. That’s why I break off my engagement. You were all rigth as long as you kept to things, but when you came to people—” She stopped.

You go, girl! There, now you’ve read the best part; I’ve saved you the trouble of having to read the whole book.

I also like how this chapter and subsequent chapters are titled, “Lying to …”, giving us explicit acknowledgement that Lucy is deceiving herself and others about her feelings. There is a level of introspection here, which, combined with the above speech, definitely elevates A Room with a View above the frivolity of mere romance.

Yet Lucy is about all that is interesting about this book, as I mentioned above. George is no Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth. As far as I’m concerned, Lucy would be better off burning everything down and moving to Canada.

Hmm. Not a bad fanfic idea….

Anyway, Forster’s writing just doesn’t get to me. It’s an incompatibility of style and of plotting rather than ability, though. I can recognize that Forster is trying to do interesting things here, and I see why other people might find this book captivating. It does not speak to me, though. Some books, the right books, will transport you into their world and make you never want to let go. And when you’ve read enough of those, you know immediately when you’ve cracked open a book that won’t. A Room with a View is such a book for me. It might not be the same with you, but that’s not enough for me to recommend it.

For the third year in a row I bought Saga for my friend for a Christmas gift. As long as they keep releasing one of theseYay, Ghüs is back for a bit!

For the third year in a row I bought Saga for my friend for a Christmas gift. As long as they keep releasing one of these volumes every year, I’m golden. Volume 6 jumps ahead four years, so Hazel is in kindergarten, and Alana and Marko are kind-of together again, searching for their daughter. Meanwhile, Prince Robot is enjoying being “off the grid” and away from the court, raising his son in peace—until pretty much everyone crashes his party. Sorry not sorry.

Without a doubt, Hazel’s larger role as a protagonist is this volume’s most notable feature. Now old enough to have some agency over her life, Hazel is starting to grasp the politics of her situation. She and her grandmother, along with one of the women who were trying to kidnap them, are in a detention centre on Landfall. Yes, after all these attempts to keep Hazel out of Landfall’s hands, she ironically ends up right under their noses. No one except Hazel’s grandmother knows her secret—but this changes, and when it does, we’re propelled into another intense and dramatic sequence of the type Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples have become so well-known for. Hazel and her grandmother must trust people who might betray them, before their time runs out.

So far, Hazel is proving a very interesting character. Her perspective is certainly unique. I especially enjoy her interactions with Miss Petrichor, a trans Wreathian character. Petrichor discovers Hazel’s secret but jumps to the conclusion that Hazel is the product of a Landfall man raping a Wreath woman. Here we have someone who is subject to discrimination herself, yet even she displays the bigotry and disgust we’ve come to expect as the reaction to Hazel’s existence. Once again, Vaughan and Staples provide us with interesting, multi-dimensional characters who have both redeeming and unlikeable qualities.

I could do without the two journalist guys who are poking around this story. I get how they fit into the plot, providing the Will with a way back towards Robot and (eventually) Alana and Marko. I guess I’m just impatient and want to see more of Hazel’s story! If she is this cool when she is a little kid, then I’m eager for the volumes that depict her actions as a teenager.

I also have to hand it to Vaughan and Staples for their excellent world-building once again. This is an area in which the graphic nature of Saga offers a leg up over a strictly prose work. Staples can, in a single page, subtly depict the cosmopolitan nature of this galactic society, the way that all these different species can coexist. This serves as a stark contrast to the homophobia and discrimination that some of the characters face. Saga’s is such a colourful, visually interesting world, and Vaughan and Staples manage to hint at a long and complex galactic history without getting bogged down in exposition.

If anything, Volume 6 only disappoints in that it doesn’t deliver a single, intense climactic moment. There are some really good scenes, some very intense scenes, but not one over-arching scene that anchors this volume in my mind. After the deaths and diversions introduced by the previous volume, this seems like a course-correction on the way to whatever goes down in the next one. I guess I’ll find out next Christmas!

It’s almost too easy to write a vampire YA romance. Real authors tackle the hard romances, like mummies. How does a clumsy teenage girl fall for a thoIt’s almost too easy to write a vampire YA romance. Real authors tackle the hard romances, like mummies. How does a clumsy teenage girl fall for a thousands-year-old mummified but reanimated corpse? You’ll have to read Unwrap My Heart to find out.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book because I am a Meat Buddy, i.e., I have pledged a small amount of money every month to Read It and Weep, the podcast that Alex Falcone and Ezra Fox do along with Chris and Tanya Smith. And even if their podcast were not a highlight of my week, this book alone makes that pledge well worth my money.

Fox and Falcone have put their years of reading bad books and watching bad movies and TV on behalf of their listeners to good use. This book is just delightful. It walks the line between parody and an actual, heartfelt story in a way I wasn’t expecting. As with the material from which they drew inspiration (particularly Twilight), the protagonist, Sofia, is a klutzy and rather uninteresting character—but the side characters more than make up for that. Sofia’s dad is a mustache-sporting and laid-back fellow, except when it comes to the dangers of boys and salmonella. Sofia’s best friend, Duncan, is an amateur archaeologist who has already made a name for himself in the field before even graduating high school—and let’s not even mention his huge collection of cast phalluses. Hearing these characters’ backstories and seeing how they interact with Sofia is invariably hilarious.

There are so many good lines in here that if I quoted them all I’d probably be in violation of the copyright. I loved how Sofia’s dad explains why it’s always important for her to keep pepper-spray on her person: “Show me a problem that can’t be Maced, and I’ll show you a mugger with goggles”. Or, a bit earlier in the book, when he learns that a school project prevents her from going on a weekend camping trip, he says, “Ah, School Dad told you that? He’s worse than Strict Dad. Probably should listen to him”.

The thing is, these lines are meant to be funny (and they are). But exchanges like this, pervasive as they are throughout the book, also feel so real. This is how I have conversations with my friends, with my dad even. We’re funny with each other in a way that dialogue in many other YA novels (including Twilight) doesn’t capture. Maybe it should come as no surprise that a comedian like Falcone is good at coming up with one-liners. Nevertheless, it’s hard to land those lines so often, especially amid Real Talk™.

Take, for example, the exchange between Duncan and Sofia mid-way through the book. I love that Falcone gets to exorcise a long-running complaint of his on the podcast when it comes to the term “love triangle”:

“It literally never occurred to me that Princess Beige would ever be in a love triangle.”

“It’s really more like a love angle since Seth and I aren’t also dating. It’s just two lines pointing toward you.”

“That makes sense geometrically, I guess. Except Sofia’s 1st law is that no lines ever point toward me.”

“Sofia, you are so smart about everything besides judging people, and that includes yourself. You don’t have any idea how special you are.”

I love this scene, because even as Duncan is calling Sofia special because he’s trying to admit he’s in love with her (oh, it’s not a spoiler, like you didn’t guess that was coming from page 1), he’s also reinforcing the trope that Sofia is Special in that way only teenaged YA protagonists in paranormal romances can be. And, for what it’s worth, I agree with Falcone that “love triangle” is rather inaccurate.

Other things I enjoyed about Unwrap My Heart include the running gag that everyone mistakes Seth for a hipster instead of a mummy, as well as the suspiciously consistent denial that any other supernatural creatures exist. I liked that the villain was largely incompetent but that Sofia and friends had a hard time defeating him, at least at first, because they have about as much experience with fighting a supervillain bent on world domination as you might expect. Also, how everyone in Rock Ridge except Sofia seems to be part of a bird-appreciation club with weekly meetings.

Finally, let’s talk about sex. As soon as Sofia discovers Seth’s “secret” (that he is a mummy, if you haven’t already caught on), the very first thing she considers is how this will affect having sex with him. Which seems like such an honest thing for a YA protagonist to think about. Stephenie Meyer goes from skirting the issue in Twilight to having to explain it in … err … gory detail in Breaking Dawn. I love how proactive Sofia is, what with her searching the Internet for anything remotely useful. Similarly, I love the dream epilogue at the end and how it gives Sofia agency.

Reading this book is like listening to an episode of the podcast. It’s smart and funny and a relaxing escape from all the mellow-harshing reality we have going on in 2016. It takes a lot of work to write parody prose that is neither so over-the-top it implodes upon itself nor so clever it twists back on itself like an ouroboros of comedy and turns into legitimately good fiction. But you don’t have to be a Read It and Weep listener to enjoy this book or its jokes.

I’m a little disappointed that Falcone and Fox did not include a helicopter named Charlie Tango, and I can only hope they rectify that in the sequel.

Speaking of sequels, if they don’t want to do a direct sequel to Unwrap My Heart, I’d love to see their take on a time-travel story—maybe Chris would have some input on that, given the amount he and Alex have discussed time travel. Or perhaps the next Completely Legitimate Publishing novel could involve a pro wrestler turned actor turned action hero…. Or will we finally see the prose debut of Space Shark? Whatever it is, I would also love to see some LGBTQIA+ characters. Spoofing hetero YA romance is all well and good, but I know Falcone and Fox can find a way to make their parody romance more inclusive.

**spoiler alert** This is a book that shouldn’t work, but it does. Magical duels. Revenge plots. Hidden identities. Predictable twists. And a love tri**spoiler alert** This is a book that shouldn’t work, but it does. Magical duels. Revenge plots. Hidden identities. Predictable twists. And a love triangle to boot. None of this is new, some of it is often boring. So why did I enjoy The Crown’s Game so damn much?

Well, to start, there is no shortage of magic in this book. Don’t get me wrong: I like books that don’t have much magic too. Every once in a while, though, it’s nice to just go all out, like Evelyn Skye does here. The main characters and a handful of minor ones are constantly using magic to do, well, everything, from conjuring food to creating entire islands with vegetation and magical park benches that take you into dream worlds. The magic here can be small or big, but it is always wondrous.

Skye wastes little time getting into the thick of things. After introducing us to Vika and Nikolai, the Crown’s Game proper commences in short order. Vika’s magic is wild and elemental and energetic. She can conjure lightning, command ice, tame rivers. Nikolai’s magic is intricate, mechanistic, methodical. He can create amazing engineering structures, imbue automatons with simulated life. They complement each other so well, yet everyone else is very clear on this “no sharing the magic wellspring of power” rule: one of them is going to have to die.

While it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that Vika and Nikolai are going to be a thing, I respect that Skye develops their attraction slowly. Not even the love triangle thrown in there manages to ruin this for me. Although Pasha is not all that convincing (he is such a dolt), it keeps things interesting, because of course it means that regardless of which enchanter wins the Game, Pasha is going to lose someone he cares about. And Skye has a lot of fun playing with the irony inherent in Pasha’s ignorance of Nikolai’s true identity. When he finally finds out and that wall goes up between them, coupled with his unexpected accession to the throne … oh boy, now that is a sharp and unmistakable transition into the final act.

When Aizhana first comes onto the scene, I questioned her relevance. She seemed like an appendix, never really interacting with the other characters or affecting the main plot—until the end, of course. Even so, I could have done without Nikolai being Pasha’s half-brother. I saw it coming pretty early on—and I’m not usually great at predicting things. It just doesn’t much to the story, beyond justifying Aizhana’s actions and thereby getting Pasha in a position where he has to end the Crown’s Game. Nikolai could just as easily have been the son of some random Russian soldier instead of throwing a bond of blood into the mix. I guess Skye was trying to really underscore the nature of the tragedy here, but I don’t think she needed this extra layer.

The true tragedy in The Crown’s Game lies in its masterful demonstration of how individuals are not always free to make their own choices. We are manipulated, constrained by, rules and systems not of our making. Pasha chafes at the restrictions that surround him as tsarevich and, later, makes decisions as tsar based on what he feels he must do for Russia, rather than for himself. Neither Vika nor Nikolai asked to be part of the Crown’s Game; neither wants to kill the other, not really—nevertheless, they have no choice but to participate in this cruel contest. All of these actions are motivated by the larger necessity of preserving Russia as an imperial force, one with a strong army, strong leader, and strong enchanter. The constant references to uprisings and skirmishes with the Ottomans remind us of the precariousness of Russia’s place as a power.

The climax of this book is intense, partly because you’re holding out hope until the last moment that they will find a way to cheat the game. It seems like Nikolai might have managed to escape death, to at least have escaped into “ante-death” as his mother calls it. Nevertheless, I like that Skye gives us a victor and Pasha a Pyrrhic victory. Whatever hopes he might have had regarding Vika are now shuttered: she can barely stand to be around him, and she requests space until she has to take up her official position of Imperial Enchanter. I’m intrigued by the possibilities that this leaves open for the sequel: it is much more interesting, of course, if the Enchanter doesn’t particularly like her Tsar. Moreover, Yuliana took an instant dislike to Vika at the ball, before she knew Vika was one of the two enchanters. I wonder if that dislike will carry over once Vika is in the employ of the royal family.

The Crown’s Game surprises, because on the whole there is nothing all that new or original about it. Indeed, Skye falls back on tropes that usually don’t do much for me. Somehow, though, the entire book comes together into a very enjoyable experience. The romance is a little forced, but other emotions feel very deep and real (Vika’s subdued state of depression following Sergei’s death, the fact she can’t just continue on as if everything is normal, really moved me). The two main characters approach magic in different ways, as a result of their upbringing and mentoring, yet ultimately they have very similar philosophies. I’m looking at some of the less-than-favourable reviews here and nodding in agreement with many of their points—yet I can’t help it; I liked this book, and I want to know what happens next!

I couldn’t stay away from the sequel to The Wrath & the Dawn, and my library was quick to enable me with The Rose & the Dagger. The love stoI couldn’t stay away from the sequel to The Wrath & the Dawn, and my library was quick to enable me with The Rose & the Dagger. The love story of Shahrzad and Khalid and the war it has provoked come to a swift conclusion here. Hold on to your bookmarks, folks, because Renée Ahdieh is not slowing down this magic carpet ride, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

First off: you absolutely should read the first book before you read this one. They essentially form one large story—I don’t know if they were originally written that way and then split for publication reasons or whatever, but if you think you can pick up this book and grok the story, you’re wrong. While I’m going to avoid spoilers for The Rose & the Dagger here, there are spoilers for the first book. Read my spoiler-free review of the first book, linked above, if you need help to deciding whether to read this series sooner or later. Yes, those are your only two choices.

The Rose & the Dagger picks up quite literally where The Wrath & the Dawn leaves off. Khalid allowed his rival Tariq to essentially kidnap Shahrzad to keep her safe. That’s right: they are sworn enemies, the latter plotting an uprising against the former, but they conspire to get Shahrzad away from Rey “for her own good.” It’s so convoluted and I love it! Of course, as we established from the onset of the first book, Shahrzad is not some girl to be manipulated and damselled at the whims of mere men. She swiftly starts plotting not so much an escape as a resolution. She seeks out help and lays the groundwork for ridding Khalid of his curse and hopefully quelling the uprising before too many people get hurt.

One thing I love about this book and its main character is how Ahdieh portrays people crossing Shahrzad for a variety of reasons and conflicting goals and priorities. It’s not just a matter of people taking a dislike to her; many of her closest friends and family serve minor antagonistic roles in this story. These people act at cross-purposes with Shahrzad out of good intentions, or from misguided but very human flaws and emotions. For example, Reza has transferred his hatred for Khalid onto Shahrzad, and this informs every action he takes here. Tariq has yet to accept that Shahrzad and him are never going to be a thing, that she is in love with Khalid, and his struggle to do so forms an important character arc. Irsa vacillates between conspiring with Shahrzad and trying to protect her, again, “for her own good”. And, of course, Khalid is still learning that Shahrzad is not a thing to be sent away or protected: she is a calipha, a force to be reckoned with, an equal partner who can rule with him. All of these little examples combine into a rich tapestry of complexity.

Not all characters are created equal, of course, and there are a few who receive less development than one might like. Salim is a cartoonish villain. Yasmine and Despina, each variously ally and enemy to Shahrzad & co, seem to make their costume changes off the page, making it difficult to understand or believe the motivations behind such changes of heart. Rahim and Jalal, both of whom receive a fair amount of development in the first book, languish more here. (Rahim has his moments, of course, but he remains an ancillary character for all his newfound significance.)

Yet, much like its predecessor, The Rose & the Dagger is ultimately a story about stories. It is inevitable that some characters will be flatter than others. Khalid and Tariq talk about who the villain is of the story, and much of Shahrzad’s actions are framed around the idea that she wants to change the narrative into which they have all been cast against their will. The book concludes with Shahrzad starting yet another of her stories, a reminder that even when one story ends, another can always begin right after it. The parallels are about as clear as Ahdieh can draw them without making the book metafictional. And this works very well for me, because when I read I like to mentally disassemble stories and turn their moving parts over in my mind to see how they work. Ahdieh’s careful craftsmanship here is like getting to watch an intricate machine whose works are visible and even enhance its overall form: you can enjoy watching it function even as you observe its mechanism of functioning. There is just something so delectable about a very deliberately-crafted, finely-tuned story.

The true fine-tuning, though, isn’t in the characters but in the plot. As I mentioned earlier, this is a fast-paced book. Ahdieh is trying to resolve a lot in a short amount of time. This is where that craftsmanship is so important. That magic carpet is genius. Shahrzad can cover vast distances in short periods of time, but it’s not a magic bullet that gets her out of every scrape. I’m so used to epic fantasy series where it takes books upon books for things to happen, but Ahdieh has none of that. For example, I was expecting the breaking of Khalid’s curse to form the climax of the book. This proves to be a red herring, however, with an entirely different chain of events forming the third act—and I love it when a book surprises me like that. The only thing better than the satisfaction of watching my expectations fulfilled is when a book takes those expectations, acknowledges they existed, and then tosses them away and gives me something even better.

The showdown between Khalid and Shahrzad on one side and Salim on the other is so excellent. It’s a thorny problem, because the former two are so invested in finding a peaceful or less-bloody resolution to the matter. They have the ability to beat Salim, but they want to defeat him through cunning rather than force. I love it. Moreover, it’s an even more compelling conflict than the need to remove Khalid’s curse, because it allows Ahdieh to show that Khalid and Shahrzad’s love is good not just for them but for the entirety of Khorasan. Finally, it’s a perfect thematic climax to Ahdieh’s Mad Max-echoing message that women are not things:

“I will not play these games with you, Salim. Where is she?”

Another smug smile. “Have you lost something of import, nephew?”

At that, Tariq took a step forward. The captain of the guard lifted a hand to stop him.

“I have not lost a thing, Salim Ali el-Sharif….”

Yeah, I did a fist-pump when I read that. It’s such a great exchange. It wasn’t long ago that Tariq himself viewed Shahrzad as a thing: a heart to possess, a woman to hold and keep with him. Sure, he might have admired her opinionated mind or her willingness to speak it, but he acted toward her as one acts towards something one wants to capture and have. This is a pivot for him, then, a measure of how far he he has come, another example of the book rejecting the idea that women should be damsels. Ahdieh empowers all of the women in this book in varying ways, validating everything from love to a desire for power and prestige.

The Wrath & the Dawn was a powerful and exciting opening note, but The Rose & the Dagger feels like it contains the bulk of Ahdieh’s storytelling symphony. I read this in a single day. I didn’t intend to; I had other things to do and was only planning to read half-way. But I could not put this down. I needed to keep going, to find out what would happen next, to see Shahrzad and Irsa and Khalid and Tariq keep growing and changing and fucking up and making amends and kicking ass over and over again. Some books and series are a slow burn that take chapters and entire volumes to grow on you before finally paying off. This is not one of those. The Rose & the Dagger is a stunning and satisfying conclusion to the story begun in the first book, and my only regret from reading it so fast is that it is over now.

**spoiler alert** I’m not sure Thomas Hardy knows what love is. Or maybe I don’t know what love is. Does anyone know what love is? Haddaway has been z**spoiler alert** I’m not sure Thomas Hardy knows what love is. Or maybe I don’t know what love is. Does anyone know what love is? Haddaway has been zero help, by the way.

If I was worried I’ve been ploughing through Hardy’s novels too fast, I shouldn’t be: my last review was over a year ago! Time to rectify that! It’s also a nice break from the YA/SF-heavy binge I’ve been on (and to which I will likely return shortly!).

The Return of the Native is firmly in the middle of Hardy’s career as a novelist, and it shows. The novel opens with an exhaustive description of the picturesque Egdon Heath and its bucolic pre–Industrial Revolution furze-cutters and reddlemen. Hardy wants you to understand that this is the most beautiful green place in all the beautiful green places in England—and unlike the rest of England, in Wessex it only rains when Hardy needs pathetic fallacy. It also exists in a kind of bubble, with only the barest of interruptions—all of Wessex is like that, of course, but Egdon Heath seems isolated even from wider Wessex itself. There is something so profanely ironic about Hardy setting such unabashed tragedies within these idyllic pseudo-utopian worlds.

So this book has the same environmental sensations as the earlier Under the Greenwood Tree and, like Far from the Madding Crowd, it flirts with the theme that loving “wrongly” leads to disaster. Hardy’s fascination with Greek and Shakespearean modes of tragedy is on full display here. While the characters’ downfalls are rooted in their personalities, arguably the tragedies that befall them are also an indictment of contemporary norms around love and relationships. This is a proving ground for Hardy’s cynicism, much more fully explored in his later novels and poems, about the influence of class, wealth, and misguided moralism on people’s happiness. As such, The Return of the Native might be simultaneously one of Hardy’s best and worst novels, for it has such deep, abiding passion yet also suffers from rough edges.

I was not feeling this novel at first! It wasn’t just the seemingly-endless pages of description of the heath. None of the characters seemed remotely likeable or even sympathetic. Wildeve is a cad; Mrs Yeobright is stuck up on her high horse; Thomasin might as well be a washboard for all the personality she has; and Eustacia, while fuller in character, has a massive chip on her shoulder (to the point where I was starting to agree with Mrs Yeobright’s evaluation of her, and that made me feel weird). Even as the novel progresses and the actual plot emerges (this takes too long), I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t find myself wanting any of these people to be happy.

I criticize Hardy for it above, and I’m only half-joking: the word love gets tossed around very lightly. I don’t really think this is Hardy’s fault; however, it does make the characters seem more like players in a melodrama than actual people. Eustacia convinces herself she is “in love” with Clym after about a night of spying on him. It’s pretty clear that this is wishful thinking on her part, a psychological duplicity visited upon herself because Clym, the eponymous native, is an enigmatic unknown to Eustacia who holds the possibility of rescuing her from her benighted existence on the heath. She falls out of love just as easily when—surprise, surprise—no such extraction to even greener pastures emerges.

With this failure on Clym’s part to abandon his stupid schooling plan take Eustacia to Paris—or even Budmouth!—Hardy makes some genuinely interesting observations about our propensity for deceiving ourselves about others. Eustacia is convinced that, despite Clym being very upfront about his intentions prior to marrying her, the marriage itself will somehow help her change his mind. So, I mean, I can be critical of the ease with which Eustacia or Wildeve keep falling in/out of love with each other and other people. But real human follies lie at the heart of all these relationships.

So we might summarize Hardy’s position as being, “Everyone is an idiot, so why does society punish us for it?” He acknowledges that people are making bad, rash decisions about things like marriage. But it seems self-defeating, and even cruel, for our society to make it so difficult to make amends. The Return of the Native is set in the 1840s, a decade prior to England’s first stab at proper divorce proceedings. Once hitched, our couples have but two choices: live together in discontent, or separate in semi-scandal.

Hardy explores the former state with the Wildeves. It’s not so much that Thomasin doesn’t love Wildeve as I suspect she’s the type of person who doesn’t love any of these characters in a romantic way. Rather, my reading of Hardy’s subtext is that Thomasin represents the type of woman who loves being courted. Hence her excitement and breathlessness at Wildeve’s pursuit, particularly when his suit was forbidden by her aunt and guardian. Deep down, Thomasin knows—and rebels against—the pressure in English society to make a “respectable” marriage. Hardy, as is typical of his somewhat proto-feminist writings, deftly illustrates how women of any class had few options beyond marriage; once married, even the rustic women who populate the Wessex countryside are judged more harshly than their menfolk if they stray. Thinking about it now, I’m actually getting angry about this: Wildeve knocks up Thomasin, and then while she is at home nursing their kid, he has the luxury of debating whether or not to run away with Eustacia.

(I’m angry in part because of how Wildeve treats his wife and child, but also because a hundred years on, this kind of double standard still exists.)

With the Yeobright–Vye marriage, on the other hand, Hardy gives us two people are just so ill-matched for one another, and everyone except them sees it from the beginning. Eustacia seems more classically suited to the judgement I passed on Thomasin above. She certainly loves the attention Wildeve pays her. But I think that’s more a symptom of her general boredom from life on the heath. And whether or not Eustacia really is suited for town life, she definitely thinks she is. She doesn’t love Clym so much as the idea of everything Clym represents, the possibility of escape from Egdon Heath. Throughout the novel, she remains remarkably consistent in this goal—hence, when Wildeve eventually presents her with the escape route, she seizes upon it immediately and fatally. Like Eustacia, Clym is a very driven individual; however, he allows himself to be seduced by the simplicity of furze-cutting life.

There is a rich dramatic symmetry to the fates of the characters as well, once again hearkening back to classical tragedies. Eustacia wants to leave the heath, so she dies in the river—symbolically, she is now part of the heath forever. Wildeve is punished for wanting to leave his wife to follow Eustacia by being allowed to follow her in the universe’s ironically macabre way. Clym gets to live—but he essentially abandons his project of intellectual enlightenment in favour of moral enlightenment, because he recognizes that the universe has been punishing him for his hubris. Thomasin’s fate, even altered by the final chapter Hardy added at the end to appease serial readers, is a type of “punishment.” Venn loves her more than she loves him (again, see above, I don’t think she loves anyone). She essentially agrees to marry him because she doesn’t want to be a widow or dependent on her cousin. Hardy once more uses her to show the pragmatic attitude women often had to take towards marriage. The book’s original ending would have been Clym’s words:

Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that you se your way clear to happiness again. My sex owes you every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by.

Clym totes wouldn’t have been tweeting using #notallmen; he gets it!

Hardy still manages to conclude the story with a focus on Clym (part of me wonders if Clym’s fate as revealed in “Aftercourses” is a kind of rebuke or “f u” to the magazine/readers who demanded a happy ending). His epilogue is a philosophical return to the physical descriptions visited upon us by the opening of the book: Hardy disdains organized religions or philosophies and prefers instead simpler wisdom, simpler times. Typical Hardy.

See, this is why I write reviews. Actually reading The Return of the Native was not as energizing as some of Hardy’s other books. There were certainly parts that I liked, moments that made me gasp or groan as I anticipated what was to come—everything that makes Hardy a great writer is here, on display, in one way or another. But it doesn’t have that central protagonist present in some of Hardy greater works, or that sublime plotting of The Woodlanders. In writing this review, however, I have had to grapple more intensely with the book’s meanings, and my appreciation has deepened as a result. There is plenty to talk about here, with this one volume, even without attempting to converse about it in the context of Hardy’s wider works.

The Return of the Native is never going to vie with some of Hardy’s other novels as my favourite, nor would I consider it his “best.” I definitely see its appeal more now than I did when I began reading it, and I suspect any other Hardy fan will as well.

I would like to conclude with a shout-out to my man Hardy for his mad naming schemes. Far From the Madding Crowd gave us Bathsheba Everdeen, and now here we have Eustacia Vye, Thomasin Yeobright, and Damon Wildeve. Hardy is a master of unusual naming, and it oddly makes these books that much more delightful to a modern audience.

As I reflected in my review of The Sleeper and the Spindle, fairytale retellings are all the rage. With The Wrath & the Dawn, we have a new takeAs I reflected in my review of The Sleeper and the Spindle, fairytale retellings are all the rage. With The Wrath & the Dawn, we have a new take on One Thousand and One Nights. Unlike the original, the stories within the frame story fall by the wayside, for the most part, as Shahrzad’s relationship with Khalid intensifies. Renée Ahdieh’s reimagining, then, is less about retelling the stories from One Thousand and One Nights and more about exploring that dynamic between a supposedly-cruel or vindictive king and a clever, virtuous volunteer bride. Even so, deep down, as so many stories are, this is also a story about stories and the power that stories hold over our hearts.

I know precisely when this story got me: when we learn that there is something deeper to Khalid’s executions of his wives. Though hinted at very obliquely in the beginning, this becomes more apparent later in the story, following Shahrzad’s first stays of execution. After escaping her appointments with death twice in a row, there is a tense scene where guards arrive and haul her away and very nearly garrote her … only for Khalid to rescue her at the last moment, for he had not sanctioned this execution. The exchanges that follow between Khalid and General al-Khoury, the ongoing tension whenever Shahrzad attempts to uncover the truth of things—it’s all very powerful, very suspenseful. A guy killing his bride every night and then marrying a new one is pretty terrible, so you need to have a persuasive justification if you’re going to suggest he isn’t a completely horrible person.

Indeed, The Wrath & the Dawn really casts doubt on this idea that we can assign moral signifiers to people (as opposed to actions). Khalid’s killing of his wives is an evil act, yet there is a purpose behind this act that some might view as noble. Similarly, Shahrzad marries Khalid with every intention of finding a way to kill him to avenge her best friend’s death—and while we view generally view killing as repugnant (see previous sentence), we often accept justifications such as vengeance over villains. As Shahrzad survives and she and Khalid get to know each other (or not, as Shahrzad points out much later in the novel in an incredibly touching scene), the reader is left wondering exactly where the moral high ground lies. Or was there ever any high ground to begin with?

Ahdieh leaves us with mounting certainty that somehow this is all going to end in tears. Shahrzad and Tariq seem so very much in love, to the point that Tariq is willing to stage a total rebellion against Khalid just to get her back! Yet as Shahrzad develops feelings for Khalid, and as we find out more about the mystery behind his penchant for wife-murdering, the answer to the question of “which people belong together” seems more distant rather than less.

I’m actually rather surprised I’m so into this love triangle. I think it helps that Shahrzad’s fall for Khalid is so gradual. She’s still intent on revenge halfway through the book, even as she is acknowledging her attraction to him. Also, the attraction between them is consistent with her character; she is not drawn to him just because of plot but because she is inherently drawn to risk, danger, and the prospect of the unknown. The Shahrzad who climbed trees even when she fell out of them is now the Shahrzad who will get to the bottom of the mysterious Caliph of Khorasan and his curse. Even if it kills her.

Speaking of which: what a cliffhanger! I have read some great books this year, including several that have made me want to run out and get the sequel right away. Now I have to add The Wrath & the Dawn to that list. How can you not want to jump into book 2 to find out what happens? Characters going Dark Side on us, unrest at the borders, and now a botched rescue that will doubtlessly lead to misinterpretation and tension between people who care for each other … oh man.

So this is a book with a very potent, fast-paced, suspenseful story. And it really is about stories as well. In addition to the stories that Shahrzad initially uses to beguile Khalid, there are the stories that these characters tell about themselves and others. To Tariq, Rezia, et al, Khalid is a literal monster out of myth—a boss that must be fought and defeated if the caliphate and its people are to be freed. Shahrzad begins with this opinion but then sees a new narrative: Khalid as the tortured, cursed figure, doomed to hurt the people he loves in order to save them. Ahdieh even weaves stories within the relationships between minor characters: Despina the handmaiden and Jalal the guard; Jahandar’s attempt at heroics and the immense price they extract from him. These are all old, old stories, but Ahdieh repurposes them and uses them in fresh, interesting ways. I wish Khorasan itself had been more fleshed out—other than a brief visit to the market, we don’t get much of a sense of how this country actually functions, or what its culture is like beyond “fairytale Arabic”. Then again, this is entirely consistent with the legendary tone of the book, where broad strokes setting is fine as long as the characters themselves are richer and more thought-provoking.

Not all retellings are retold equally. The Wrath & the Dawn wisely avoids hewing too closely to its roots. In so doing, it takes on a life of its own, one that definitely grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.

I feel really bad, because I received an ARC of Fever at Dawn from House of Anansi in exchange for a review … and then my to-be-read pile of books quiI feel really bad, because I received an ARC of Fever at Dawn from House of Anansi in exchange for a review … and then my to-be-read pile of books quite literally swallowed this ARC and two others. In the chaos of real life and having to read other books, I just forgot these were around. I have unearthed them, however, and like precious gems I shall now read and review them diligently. If you would like to send me free books for me to ignore far longer than you probably want, please contact me!

This is a fictionalized account of how Péter Gárdos’ parents met and courted during their convalescence in different hospitals in Sweden following the holocaust. Miklós, Gárdos’ father, is diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis. Despite having six months to live, he strikes up a correspondence at random with Lili. It’s not really a spoiler to say that they don’t die, I hope, since obviously Gárdos is around to tell the tale. How can you not love a story like this? It’s the kind of against-all-odds type of romantic comedy fodder that is too good to be true (except, in this case, it is true).

For both Miklós and Lili, their letter-writing is essential to their rebuilding of self following World War II. Both endured horrible mistreatment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and when they were “liberated” they were near death. This novel, then, is the story of them coming back—not just physically, but mentally. Gárdos captures in a microcosm this struggle for many Europeans who were involved not just in fighting but in survival during the war. So in addition to their physical recuperation, both Miklós and Lili need to find hope in humanity again.

The tenderness and touching misunderstandings offer a nice counterpoint to the more serious moments. For example, I loved when another one of Miklós’ correspondents pays a surprise visit to his hospital to declare her undying love for him and her intent to marry him. He smoothly pawns her off on the Don Juan of the hospital, claiming he only wrote the letters on Harry’s behalf because he has the best penmanship. Is it true? I don’t know, nr do a I care (it’s fictionalized, after all)—it’s fun.

As I mentioned to a friend while reading this, “This is what they did before online dating.” That is, Miklós first finds Lili by requesting a list of Hungarian women about his age, from about his hometown, who are also convalescing in Sweden. Then he writes them cold, sees who responds, and decides which ones he should keep as pen pals. As someone who, because of the time and place of my birth, never got much into letter writing (and, because of me, has never gotten into dating), I found this entire procedure fascinating.

Since the resolution of this story is foregone, we need a different source of tension. Gárdos introduces this in the relationships with the main characters and the particulars of the protagonists’ lives. There is some doubt with regards to whether Lili’s parents survived. Similarly, it’s not clear what Miklós and Lili will do once they are released from hospital. Miklós commitment to socialism recurs throughout the book, so it’s implied that he wants to join the cause in some way (and Gárdos does explain further in his afterword, but not within the story itself). Lili is more lukewarm on socialism. She has several friends who tug at her in different ways. The conflict among Judit, Lili, and Miklós and the question of the couple’s official religion provides enough tension through the climax of the novel.

I was surprised by how much I liked Fever at Dawn. I do like books set in/around World War II that are not about World War II per se. And I’m a bit of a sucker for sappy “based on a true story.” However, I was worried there wouldn’t be enough substance here. Fear not: Gárdos provides plenty in the way of characterization, philosophy, and turns of phrase. The setting is intricate, if not in description then in atmosphere. The story is a careful depiction of the combination of levity and gravity that must have permeated these hospitals full of concentration camp survivors: everyone is excited and happy to be alive, yet at the same time, so many that they knew were not as lucky. In this time, it is easy to lose hope—or to regain it. And so Fever at Dawn is a simple story, but it is a heartwarming one, and definitely one I enjoyed reading.

As a longtime fan of the Raine Benares series, I was excited when I learned that Lisa Shearin was self-publishing a seventh book. Although All SpellAs a longtime fan of the Raine Benares series, I was excited when I learned that Lisa Shearin was self-publishing a seventh book. Although All Spell Breaks Loose was a satisfying conclusion to the Saghred saga, there seems like plenty of story left to tell about Raine and this world. Sure enough, Wedding Bells, Magic Spells begins just before Raine’s wedding to Mychael. At the same time, the Isle of Mid is playing host to the equivalent of nuclear non-proliferation peace talks among the major nations. Oh, and someone is trying to kill everyone, and make it look like the goblins are doing it. This is the perfect set up for some intense, thrilling intrigue—but to be honest, for most of the book I wasn’t feeling it.

This is a difficult review, just because the amount of time that has passed since I last read this series makes it hard for me to trust how much of this is the book’s influence and how much is just the way I’ve changed since I read All Spell Breaks Loose. While I’ve always delivered honest critiques of this series in the past, I’ve also always genuinely enjoyed every single book, despite any bumps or flaws. Wedding Bells, Magic Spells is different in that it’s the first Raine Benares book I didn’t enjoy that much. Whereas previous books had great pacing and fantastical action scenes, this book largely feels like a series of recaps.

The story opens with a great deal of exposition on Raine’s background, and in particular what happened at the end of the last book. Fair enough, I thought—there was a lengthy gap between the two books, so much so that even regular readers like me would have trouble recalling the details. So I gave that one a free pass. But then it happens again. And again. And before you know it, the book feels more like “Raine explains…” than “Raine does….” There is so much more telling than showing—or, to be more accurate, Shearin shows and tells, which might be even more annoying. A character can barely sneeze without Raine analyzing the action, then explaining how it relates to that character’s culture or position or what happened three books ago. One reason I love series with rich backgrounds and mythologies is because longtime readers will understand callbacks and allusions that newcomers just won’t. We don’t need every allusion explained to us, unless it is crucial to understanding the present situation.

Shearin clearly has a very complex world (or multiverse, more like) thought out here, too. Previous books featured travels to Hell, and The SPI Files and this book have both confirmed that Shearin’s two series take place within a larger multiverse. Wedding Bells, Magic Spells also feature portals to another world, being used as a staging ground by extradimensional invaders. I love all of this so much. Firstly, there is so much more happening in this series than the Saghred, and it’s clear that there is plenty more story left to tell about Raine, Tam, Mychael, et al. Secondly, unlike her penchant for explaining what happened previously, Shearin is happy not to delve too deeply into how Raine’s world or magic works. As a result, we’ve had to wait seven books to see things like portals to other worlds and extradimensional invaders—but it’s obvious that Shearin has been planning these plot points for a while now.

Now, objectively, a lot happens in this book. In addition to the much-hyped wedding, there are assassination attempts to foil, shapeshifters, monsters infesting the Void used for mirror travel, and all sorts of mysteries and shenanigans that Raine must deal with during the peace talks. It should make for an intense story. So I was just so surprised that I dawdled with this short book. The heavy exposition really breaks the pacing, and despite all these events, it feels overwhelmingly as if Raine doesn’t do much at all.

I did enjoy getting to meet some of the new characters, particularly Mychael’s parents. Raine’s mother-in-law is great during the shapeshifter scene, and I loved their bonding afterwards. That being said, it might have been nice if not everyone had fallen head-over-heels for Raine. Shearin has a great flare for the dramatic, but she can also write really nuanced characters—Tam and his addiction to dark magic is a prime example. Unfortunately, that kind of nuance and depth seemed to be missing from most of the characters, who seemed to fall into fairly stock descriptions.

While it has its moments, Wedding Bells, Magic Spells might be my least favourite Raine Benares book yet. Diehard fans will love the ending and its resolution of what has been—for us if not for Raine and Mychael—such a long arc. That alone is definitely worth reading this book, which is not so much bad as it is just disappointingly banal. The sequel is supposedly from Tam’s point of view, and I’m hopeful this will inject some freshness into the series—I’m sad to say goodbye to Raine, even temporarily, but it might be interesting to see her through someone else’s eyes!

Oh look, an Isabel Allende novel hanging out on the New Books shelf. You treat me so well, library. So, so well. And I tried to love it, but I reallyOh look, an Isabel Allende novel hanging out on the New Books shelf. You treat me so well, library. So, so well. And I tried to love it, but I really only ended up liking it, and even then that might be a stretch. The Japanese Lover is the kind of novel that someone else will definitely love, but that person isn’t me.

This is a parallel story of two women—Irini Bazili and Alma Belasco—and how the tragedies that happened to them at a young age shaped their lives, particularly their love lives. Irina meets Alma while working at a retirement home, and gradually the latter recounts her days growing up in the States after emigrating from Poland just before the Second World War breaks out. Meanwhile, Alma’s grandson Seth starts paying court to Irina, who for some reason seems reluctant to get involved with anyone. Yet Seth and Irina bond over their concern for Alma, who is starting to show her age, and who continues leaving Lark House intermittently on what they assume are trysts with Ichimei, Alma’s mysterious and ephemeral on-again/off-again/on-again/off-again/on-again lover over the decades.

If that sounds like a lot is going on, you would be forgiven for thinking so. Yet the novel proceeds at a leisurely, almost agonizingly slow pace, as if it has all the time in the world to unspool its story. At times it feels like it wants to be a mystery: who is Ichimei? And then it tells us, with plenty of exposition and backstory. At other times it seems to be a romance: will we ever see Alma and Ichimei together? Will Irina and Seth end up together? Yet other times imply that this is a meditation on growing old: Lark House is a microcosm for the various ways that elderly people confront aging. A book can, of course, be more than one thing. I really did enjoy some of Allende’s observations about aging, and in particular the attention she pays to how different people react.

I had a harder time appreciating the romantic or historical parts of the book. I’m supposed to care about Irina/Seth and Alma/Ichimei, but the characters feel so distant. Allende spends more of her time telling than showing, describing and narrating instead of giving us dialogue and action. It also doesn’t help that Seth is a whiny manbaby whose reaction to Irina’s trauma is “we will fix you,” as if she is some kind of broken human being and he is a God-given panacea, and who quite literally tells her to move in with him and he’ll pay her—when she retorts that he wants a “secretary with benefits” I had to give her a high-five. Seth is basically a waste of space.

Ichimei, on the other hand, seems kind of sweet. But Allende portrays him as surprisingly stereotypical. The Fukudas practise martial arts, have a ceremonial katana, etc. To her credit, she mentions a specific religion/sect (oomoto), but she doesn’t go into much detail about what makes it different—it might as well be any other “exotic” Eastern brand of spiritualism for all the readers of this book are going to care. The time that Ichimei spends in the internment camps is some of the most fascinating in the book—Allende captures the irony of the situation, of the US entering a war to fight an enemy putting Jews in concentration camps when it is doing something similar at home. But she does not flesh out these supporting characters as much as she could.

The Japanese Lover just doesn’t seem very impressed with itself, and that attitude rubbed off on me. It is a novel, but it’s a novel that goes through all the motions. Written by someone else it might be tolerable, but from someone as celebrated as Allende it feels like going to a Michelin-star restaurant only for the chef to serve you up the most “tolerable” piece of toast you’ve ever seen: yes, it is tasty, but that’s not really what you were hoping for given the reputation. This book is by no means a waste of time. As I said at the top, I can see why others might love it, whether it’s for the forbidden love angle or the juxtaposition of Alma’s youth with her more elderly days. But these elements felt so disparate for me, and they never quite came together into a fulfilling read.

**spoiler alert** This novel has quite the body count. Normally I hate hiding ARC reviews behind spoiler-walls, but it’s got to be done in this case….**spoiler alert** This novel has quite the body count. Normally I hate hiding ARC reviews behind spoiler-walls, but it’s got to be done in this case….

I received an ARC of The Butcher’s Hook for free from House of Anansi Press in return for an honest review. And I will be honest: this book squicked me out a bit. I loves me the free books, though, and if you want me to talk about how much your book squicked me out, get in touch!

Janet Ellis serves up what seems, at first, to be a fairly standard piece of historical fiction. Anne Jaccob doesn’t want to get married—but since this is London in 1763, she gets little say in the matter. She tries to distract herself from the unwanted suit by going after the butcher’s boy, gradually developing her coquettish skills and becoming more comfortable with the desires she feels when she is around the down-to-earth young Fub. Just when you think you’ve got this thing figured out, there is a twist that sends Anne off on an entirely different trajectory. It’s not what you think … but it walks that strange line between hilarious and macabre.

The beginning is lovely. Ellis develops Anne’s character quickly: we see how she is bright and eager for knowledge, even when every young. Unfortunately, Anne discovers the hard way that her sex means this thirst for knowledge won’t always be celebrated, let alone satisfied. The scene between her and Dr Edwards is very awkward and uncomfortable, to be sure. However I was actually more moved by Anne’s falling out with Keziah. This, to me, marked the moment that Anne realizes she is different, not just from men but from other women; it foreshadows her always being alone. Anne’s lack of companionship throughout her early adolescence, her lack of confidants, seems to play a big role in shaping her prior to her infatuation with Fub.

I also like how Ellis explores Anne’s nascent sexuality. Depictions of female masturbation are too few in fiction, so it’s cool that Ellis works it into a book that is all about repressed sexuality. After the meet-cute with Fub, an overwhelmed Anne retreats to her room. Ellis briefly and tastefully—but clearly—describes what’s going on, making it clear that Anne is definitely in tune with her body and aware of how to pleasure herself. This scene, almost a footnote at the end of a chapter, is in some ways much more transgressive than either the sex or the slaughter that follows.

Because, yeah. Anne straight-up murders a guy. Then a boy. Then a girl her own age.

Watching as Anne plots the murder of Dr Edwards is fascinating. Ellis conveys the thrill that Anne receives from finally having a measure of power: she can do something, can take action, to fix something she perceives as having gone wrong in her life. She harnesses the only leverage that she has (her femininity and youthful attractiveness) and lures Edwards into a secluded spot. The clinical way that she goes about killing him, and his very calm reaction to the act, almost tilts the book towards melodrama. Almost.

What actually tilts the book is what happens next, when Anne discovers a boy who went to Dr Edwards for some tutoring is suspicious and might tip the police off about her. I love this trope (I can’t find its page on TVTropes, if one exists), where in order to cover up your murder you have to kill someone else … and then the whole thing just snowballs. But if her first murder reveals Anne’s cold-bloodedness, this murder shows her utter lack of conscience. We could have attributed her offing Dr Edwards, in part, to his abuse of her when she was younger. The boy, aside from threatening to spill his guts, was innocent. And Anne’s ability to act so calmly, both when talking to Dr Edwards’ daughter and when talking to the vicar about the boy, demonstrates her deeply amoral character.

The “Jane Austen meets Gone Girl” comparison on the back of the book makes sense now. I kind of ignored it before I read the book, because I haven’t read Gone Girl and have no interest in it. That being said, I might characterize this more as “Emily Brontë meets Gone Girl,” because I think that Brontë could very well have written Gone Girl if she were alive today. Ellis is essentially replacing the Gothic horror aspect of Wuthering Heights with a no-less-chilling more modern approach to the psychopath. Although I was looking forward more to a modern deconstruction of the matchmaking of that era, instead I got to watch Anne get discounted and ignored as a result of her sex and perceived fragility. She outright confesses to Fub, at least twice, and he laughs in her face.

That ending though.

Dr Edwards’ death is revenge; the boy’s is expedience. What is Margaret’s? Malice. Plain and simple. Anne understands she cannot ever have Fub, cannot run away with him much as she might like to … but if she can’t have Fub, then she resolves that Margaret won’t have him either. Again we see the premeditation, the careful planning and guile and flattery that she uses to put her victim at ease. This time, however, there is even more cruelty. Unlike Edwards, who—while not deserving to be murdered—did wrong Anne grievously, Margaret has done nothing wrong at all. Yet Anne brutalizes her, leaves her broken and bloody to die in a fire—which, by the way, consumes and destroys the butcher’s livelihood.

It’s this collateral damage that is, in some ways, the most ghastly part of Anne’s embrace of her full darkness. Killing individuals is terrible, and we saw the damage that did to people like Dr Edwards’ daughter. Yet Anne essentially ruins the Leveners when she kills Margaret, and she shows no evidence of remorse or guilt over that consequence. It’s all the same to her.

And so she sets off into the world. I wonder if her mother knows or suspects Anne’s nature and what she has helped to unleash on an unsuspecting Britain. The Butcher's Hook is ultimately about transformation: Anne grows up from a precocious child into a dangerous young adult, and it’s anyone’s guess where she might go or who might earn her wrath next. All in all, it isn’t the novel I was expecting, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.

**spoiler alert** The back cover of Why We Broke Up warns that “Min and Ed’s story of heartbreak may remind you of your own”. I’d like to begin this r**spoiler alert** The back cover of Why We Broke Up warns that “Min and Ed’s story of heartbreak may remind you of your own”. I’d like to begin this review with some kind of witty observation about high school break-ups. Thing is, I can’t; I bring a different perspective. Min and Ed’s story of heartbreak doesn’t remind me of my own, because I don’t have such a story. I didn’t have a relationship, short or long, in high school or otherwise. I have never dumped nor been dumped, never amicably stopped seeing someone nor suffered hours of recriminations. I made a few half-hearted stabs at the whole thing, decided it wasn’t for me, and then gradually realized with some relief that it is in fact possible to opt-out of this whole crazy thing. So I lack any frame of reference for stories like this. That doesn’t stop me from pursuing them; I love love stories and stories about relationships and sex and everything that has to do with humans loving and hating on other humans. But I approach them from a different angle than many other readers might.

Maybe that’s why Why We Broke Up didn’t do much for me in the beginning. Because it certainly wasn’t Daniel Handler’s superb characterization or Maira Kalman’s utterly appropriate illustrations. This is not just a love letter; it is a love letter to love letters. Everything about this book, from its binding and glossy pages to the story and its construction and the illustrations that accompany each chapter, is high quality. The story itself is a nice spin on break-up tales: it is essentially one giant flashback organized roughly chronologically and loosely around objects that Min is returning to Ed in a break-up box. Though the objects provide a starting point, each chapter quickly pulls back and chronicles a specific moment or event in their relationship, with Min foreshadowing and reflecting on possible warning signs even as she celebrates the good parts too.

I assume that this central contradiction of relationships is something others find fascinating as well: in most cases, there is something good going on in a relationship. It’s the flame, after all, that keeps the love burning. Despite that goodness, though, something else brings the relationship to an end. And usually there is an awareness among parties that these relationships are not “forever”, as Min herself reflects at one point. She and Ed are young and chances are they will one day stop dating. But she employs the essential cognitive dissonance and puts this to one side and carries on until that inevitable moment when the break-up comes, perhaps sooner than she expected. Which brings us to the present, to Min writing the letter with her best friend, who mopes with unrequited love of her, by her side.

I like that Handler and Kalman do not make this a hatchet job of Ed, though my opinion of him is very poor indeed. They are careful to ground these characters in their context. This is a smaller town, a more conservative town, one where Christian and Jewish upbringings cause kids to reflect on whether or not losing their virginity is a worthwhile high school pursuit. Ed is very much a 17-year-old popular guy. I suspect in some ways he views Min as his manic pixie dream girl. He claims that he loves her, and I don’t know if that’s accurate (he probably doesn’t know either), but I think he is genuinely surprised to find out that she is hurt by his cheating. He knows it is wrong—hence why he hides it—but he has just never encountered someone who reacts like Min does. In this way, Handler and Kalman accurately portray the way we socialize young men to view women as interchangeable objects for sex and attention. In the end, Ed might view Min as a “different” type of distraction, but she is ultimately just another object to him—and when she is not around to fulfil his needs, be they emotional or physical, hey, Annette is right there outside his window. Convenience is king, amirite?

But I digress. Min mentions the good times as well as the bad, the ways in which dating Ed helped bring her out of a shell she had constructed around herself with the help of her friends. Min lives for (fictional) old movies, this obsession for cinema a useful shorthand for the intellectual introversion that allows her to ignore her physicality. She is not of Ed’s world and he is not of hers, and theirs is not a doomed or forbidden romance; this is not a story of starcrossed lovers. It’s a mis-match, one that everyone else seems painfully aware of. Their relationship is a plate spinning in the air, and the spectators are waiting for it to drop and shatter.

Along these lines, I never really saw what Min saw in Ed. I mean, I get that she saw something, but I didn’t like him from the start. I find this so odd, because it is from her perspective; we should see why she finds Ed attractive. Aside from the physical attraction, though, there doesn’t seem to be much that is unique about how Ed acts towards her.

I also had a hard time with the style of Min’s narration. The stream-of-consciousness, nearly-never-ending sentences are hard to read unless you really slow down and work your way through them. It comes off, in part, like Handler is trying too hard. I don’t know if this is intentional because he wants to make Min sound affected and semi-pretentious in the way such outsider teenagers like to see themselves. Reading the book, though, I cringed at parts that felt over the top. Maybe it’s the epistolary format reminding me of The Breakfast Club too, which is a good movie but also a pretentious one.

So for most of this book I was leaning towards 2 stars. It is OK but not great—would recommend to people who are not me, i.e., the younger teenage audience it’s probably intended for.

The last act improves the book, however. Ed cheating on Min is not a surprise, but Handler orchestrates the reveal so very well. The scene is set perfectly, as is the aftermath, for maximum pathos. I knew that something like this had to go down, and I was not disappointed. Min’s reaction is gratifying (to the reader) because unlike my struggle to identify the source of her feelings for Ed, this immediately feels real and true. Even though, as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I’ve never gone through what Min has gone through, I get how she is feeling betrayed. And just like a twist at the end of a movie makes you think back and revise your opinion of once-cryptic scenes, this section retroactively makes Min’s attitude and tone more sensible. She rage-flips and then goes numb. This letter is supposed to be a dismissal of Ed, a nonchalant message to let him know that she is so over him—that is a lie and everyone involved knows it, but it’s one of those tacitly-accepted lies that no one is going to challenge right now.

The climax is also a moment where Kalman’s illustrations provide unique insight. Min nearly vandalizes a newspaper clipping on the wall of the flower shop after she discovers Ed’s infidelity. Handler doesn’t tell us it’s a clipping, just that Min sees something that drives home Ed’s dishonesty and that the shopkeeper doesn’t want her ruining it because he was a big fan. Without Kalman’s illustration depicting the clipping that announces Lottie Carlson’s death, this small exchange recedes into the background of the already-powerful and emotionally-charged scene. Thanks to Kalman, this moment is now burned into my memory of the book. While illustrated novels are not a gimmick I would like to see become popular, when they are used as effectively as they are here, it is a joy.

So Why We Broke Up managed to do that rare thing where a book redeems itself in its final moments. I think there are other readers who will enjoy this a lot more than me, but I am happy that I read it. I’m still not in love, but I’m not breaking up with it either.

**spoiler alert** Oddly enough I recall being worried I wouldn’t like this book as I started it. And, of course, having finished it, I don’t know when**spoiler alert** Oddly enough I recall being worried I wouldn’t like this book as I started it. And, of course, having finished it, I don’t know whence that trepidation originated, because of course Laini Taylor has delivered another sound tapestry of rich, fantastical storytelling. Could not put down Strange the Dreamer and would have read it in a night if I had the time.

This lyrical title sounds like a play on word order or the opening of a Shakespearean monologue at first, but of course it’s actually just a title for the main character, Lazlo Strange. An orphan raised by monks, he finds himself work in a great library and starts to obsess over stories of a vanished city beyond the desert: Weep, though that isn’t its true name. Lazlo’s amateur scholarship attracts the attention of a pretty-boy alchemist, and then both find themselves invited to Weep by a delegation of its citizens, hoping to garner enough talent from these cities to help solve a unique problem. Lazlo, unlike the other representatives, has no official position, no talents, but finds himself among them anyway, living his dream of visiting Weep. As with any Taylor story, though, there is much more going on. There are gods, both dead and living, and scared people, and monsters—and some of these things are one and the same.

Strange the Dreamer establishes this entire fantasy world with a nearly-magical amount of minimal exposition. I know next to nothing about the political organization of this world. I know there’s a kingdom named Zosma, and a few other kingdoms, and whatnot. So in that sense, it might sound at first like your generic fantasy setting. Yet Taylor manages to hint at a richness that’s present, even if it’s never fully felt, leveraging that quality fairytales possess of tricking our minds into filling in the pieces without even realizing that’s what we’re doing. I feel so much more familiar with this world than with some more detail-filled stories I’ve read.

Enjoyment of this book probably rests on the shoulders of its two protagonists, Lazlo and Sarai, and whether or not you like them and/or believe their romance. To be honest, although Taylor manages to convince me their romance is fairly inevitable, it also doesn’t interest me that much (maybe because it seems inevitable). There’s very little conflict between them, very little in the way of actually getting to know one another. Sarai dying before they could ever really meet in person (that one time excepted) is tragic, sure, but it also means that their romance never really goes beyond the “I’m kind of into you” stage. That being said, by bringing Sarai back as a ghost in thrall to Minya, Taylor certainly opens up the door to a lot more possibilities of personality and interaction in book 2.

I suppose that’s the part of Strange the Dreamer I liked least: the cliffhanger. I don’t feel cheated by any means—over 500 pages is more than enough book for me, and Taylor delivers a stellar story in that space. Obviously there’s just so much more story to tell. So I don’t begrudge her the cliffhanger itself. Maybe it’s just where the story ends that bothers me. For one thing, I kind of saw the reveal regarding Lazlo’s heritage coming from … oh, hundreds of pages away? Like, it’s fairly obviously telegraphed. This made him a less interesting character for me—I suppose, at this point in my fantasy-reading, I’m kind of over Chosen Ones or Special Protagonists and more into the Average Person who just ends up in a situation and has to Do the Best They Can. Nothing about Lazlo’s heritage invalidates how much I enjoy the rest of his actions, but it diminishes my overall enjoyment of his character.

Taylor also seems to set up a lot of characters who then fall by the wayside. We meet the various members of Eril-Fane’s handpicked delegation. Some of them, like Thyon, are a constant presence; others, like Drave, show up just to get killed off and provide some plot devices. But others seem to evaporate from the story, never to be heard from again, at least for now? I hope they return in the sequel, because otherwise, why bother introducing them to us in the first place? It just seems very uneven, and that left me less-than-fulfilled.

Fortunately, other aspects of Strange the Dreamer kept me much more interested. I love the dynamics among the Godspawn. Minya’s white-hot rage over the Carnage is such a contrast to Sarai’s forgiveness and compassion, and Taylor does a great job showing us why each of them feels the way they do. The subplot/lust-triangle between Feral, Rose, and Sparrow is well done, both because it isn’t overdone and because there’s a genuine sense of loss there, an acknowledgement that sometimes what you do is going to hurt people, and having done it, nothing you can do will ever make things the same between you again. Certain choices are irrevocable. These interactions are where this book seems like it’s at its most Taylor-esque, reminding me a lot of the moral ambiguity that so invigorates the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy.

Speaking of which, I love the inclusion of the myth of the seraphim in this book. Seems like a clear hint that this book exists within the same multiverse as the previous trilogy (whether or not there is ever any crossover). It’s tastefully done without being too on-the-nose.

Laini Taylor back at it again with those good novels! Strange the Dreamer just really hit the spot: good, original fantasy. I don’t know what else to say. I’m satisfied, and yet I also want more. Bring it.

This isn't a review so much as a disjointed collection of thoughts about Saga, Volume 5. I mean, the problem with these reviews is that it always boilThis isn't a review so much as a disjointed collection of thoughts about Saga, Volume 5. I mean, the problem with these reviews is that it always boils down to more of the same. Buy Saga. Read it, in order. Do it!

Whenever I read graphic novels, I try to talk about the art and artist, since these are obviously important parts of the medium. And it’s with great respect when I say that I don’t give the art of a graphic novel as much attention as I should; I prefer words, which is why I prefer regular novels. But Volume 5 has some very explicit scenes, so it provides a good opportunity to discuss Fiona Staples’ artwork.

Saga is fairly conventional when it comes to its panel layout, so that helps. The panels are different on each page, and occasionally they’re skewed rather than perpendicular—but they are always generally quadrilateral and well-defined. Despite sticking to this conservative schema, Staples employs a great variety of panel dimensions and layouts to help tell the story. She can effortlessly convey a sense of motion, or give us a big hero shot to emphasize a particular moment.

This has always been an adult comic, and its artwork reflects that. This volume is no different, and perhaps even a little more. I mean, that two-page spread with the dragon is just … uh … wow.

Also, can we pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that Ghüs is amazing and possibly the best character in the entire series and I don’t want him to die please oh please don’t kill him?

Let’s pause and do that.

There is lots of dying in here. No spoilers, of course, just a reminder that Vaughan and Staples are GRRMing the shit out of this series: anyone and everyone can and will die, no guarantees, no warning. It’s a good thing, because like Game of Thrones they have a tremendous cast of characters, and no, and I can’t remember everyone’s name. That’s what wikis are for.

This volume might be the most insane yet in turns of plot twists. Saga continues to ramp up, with the stories going in directions both predictable and unforeseen, providing a nice mixture of reward for invested readers and twists that will keep us invested.

This is an adorable book. I don’t know why it hasn’t received more attention, though looking at other reviews, it seems that most people didn’t find iThis is an adorable book. I don’t know why it hasn’t received more attention, though looking at other reviews, it seems that most people didn’t find it as charming as I did—or at least, that charm didn’t outweigh perceived faults in David Schickler’s writing.

The premise of Sweet and Vicious is simple: it’s a gangster romance road trip black comedy.

Gangster: Henry Dante is one of Honey Pobrinkis’ best thugs—though he hasn’t had to kill anyone yet. But when Honey’s nephew threatens an innocent woman while on a job, something in Henry snaps. He betrays the Pobrinkis clan, making off with the diamonds they were sent to collect on Honey’s behalf. Now he’s a wanted man.

Romance: Grace McGlone is an odd kid. Her religious mother is obsessed with evangelists on the radio, particularly Betram Block. Somewhere along the way, Grace goes from rejecting religion to a curious convert—she’s “trying for heaven” in the “celibate until marriage” way, but after walking through an automatic car wash and jumping in Henry’s truck to run away from home, Grace seems to be more on a literal journey than a spiritual one.

Road trip: Henry and Grace tour through a couple of midwest states as they attempt to elude Honey’s pursuit and give away the diamonds Henry stole. Along the way they encounter your standard cast of quirky road trip characters who help Henry and Grace Learn a Lesson.

Black comedy: Everyone dies. Well, OK, not everyone dies. But without spoiling it, a significant number of the main cast dies. This isn’t the blackest of black comedies—think more a charcoal than jet. Really, though, that’s the only way to do humour with gangsters—you can’t ignore the reality that, at the end of the day, Honey is this guy who kills people and steals things. Gangsters, even sympathetic ones like Henry, are objectively not nice people. So when you want to tell a funny gangster story, your comedy needs that dark edge to it.

The power comes from the unexpected sources of darkness. The title, Sweet and Vicious, comes from a phrase Henry utters to himself. He’s describing Grace and himself: she’s the sweet one, and he’s the vicious thug. Or are they? As the story develops, Grace seems to have a vicious streak centred on Bertram Block—and Henry’s inherent sweetness is visible ever since he throws it all over for Helena Chalk.

I appreciate, too, that this book does not overstay its welcome. It is a short and sweet little story. Even still the first part lingers a little longer than it could, but I’d argue that the action-packed last chapter, with its precarious and enthralling climax, more than makes up for earlier indiscretions. You could easily read this in an afternoon and be none the worse for it.

The writing could be better, sure. I mean, with characters like “Honey Pobrinkis” and “Grace McGlone” and “Bertram Block” you have to recognize the aesthetic Schickler is going for here—and arguably it takes even more work to come up with such caricatures. The name “Honey Pobrinkis” isn’t just arbitrarily chosen as a funny-sounding name for a gangster. Many gangsters have sweet-sounding nicknames belied by their cruelty. Schickler carefully calibrates this nickname, even going so far as to divulge backstory for it.

So I give this book four stars for the same reason I give Animorphs novels four stars: the story is the thing. Even amidst bad writing, if your story tickles me, you’ve got me. I’m not saying I’d marry Sweet and Vicious, but I’d swipe right.

I wasn’t sure how Kasie West could follow up Pivot Point. The dual, parallel narrative structure of the first novel was neat, but I didn’t think it woI wasn’t sure how Kasie West could follow up Pivot Point. The dual, parallel narrative structure of the first novel was neat, but I didn’t think it would be as interesting a second time. Fortunately, West approaches the story differently. This time the narrative is split between Addie and Laila.

Since I found Laila an interesting character in the first book, I welcomed the opportunity to get inside her head and learn more about her life. It isn’t all that pretty. I find it interesting that as much as West positions the Compound as this controlling, nefarious entity, it isn’t all that effective at eliminating people like Laila’s dad—people who aren’t criminal but who so clearly need more help. With a better idea of Laila’s home life, her outgoing and larger-than-life personality takes on a new dimension and a new meaning. And I loved watching her interactions with Eli, particularly when they take him along on the rescue mission to Dallas. (The last third of this book is just badass.)

Meanwhile, Addie is dealing with the changes her powers seem to be undergoing. Her Divergence has expanded into a full-blown case of Time Manipulation. West subtly allows this to evolve over the course of the book. Whereas Addie’s power was at the forefront of Pivot Point, in Split Second it is simply another part of her. She uses her newfound time manipulation to her advantage, and she also Searches a few times—but it’s just not as big a deal. Similarly, while there is plenty of boy and personal drama (for both Addie and Laila) in this book, the sinister nature of the Compound is a much bigger focus now. It seems that the Compound doesn’t have the best interests of the individual in mind, and they will go to ridiculous lengths to protect Paranormal society.

Seriously, the whole test that they put Addie through? Ridiculous. All that expense for a single girl, even one they’ve flagged? And the Compound’s solution for Trevor learning of their existence is to give him a new life on the East Coast? The United States is a small place these days—what if someone recognizes him? Or do they plan to Erase the memories of everyone who knows Trevor? That seems like a lot of work, a lot of resources. It would be simpler just to kill him.

It would be simpler to kill most of these malcontents, no?

This bizarre non-lethality, coupled with its cumbersome tactics, hinders the Compound from feeling like a truly formidable adversary. Addie and Laila are great and all, but they aren’t exactly a crack squad of dissidents. You trying to tell me that a ragtag team of kids took down your highly-trained team of Compound agents? Please.

I appreciate the way that West gradually draws back the curtain on the Compound’s misdeeds. I love the setting and the idea of the Compound as this Big Bad, mad party of scientists obsessed with perfecting humanity. Nevertheless, what we’ve seen of them so far is just … not that impressive.

Fortunately, the personal drama helps distract from the messy but unfulfilling shenanigans. Addie meets Trevor again! But he totally doesn’t remember her! And she doesn’t quite remember him! And she doesn’t remember Stephanie! So she becomes norm-besties with Stephanie! And then Laila helps her remember Trevor! So she puts the moves on him—smmooooooth! They go to the formal in a big group, and she totally—

—spoilers.

Suffice it to say, the reader can definitely understand what Addie means when she talks about how both paths she Searches are real to her, even the rejected one. The future where she’s with Trevor never happened, but it feels real to us (and to her, once she gets that memory back). We know stuff about Trevor that Addie doesn’t know at first, which is fun—plus the whole Stephanie thing, which is an even richer source of irony. On a more serious level, though, West makes a fine point about how context and chance can influence people’s impressions of us. In one context and through certain chance events, Stephanie sees Addie immediately as a rival and never gets to know her as a friend. In another context, Stephanie and Addie become friends—enough so that when Addie starts mulling over the possibility of getting together with Trevor, she feels really bad about it. She knows she is betraying Stephanie. This idea that a person might have disliked you, or might have liked you, if circumstances had just been a little bit different … it’s one of the best parts of alternative history plots, and West plays with it to great effect here.

I should also add that my criticisms are almost entirely in hindsight. The bumbling nature of the Compound never pulled me out of the story or ruined my enjoyment. As I said earlier, the last part of this book is badass. Duke is a douche, everything is going to hell, and Laila and Addie pretty much have to save the day. But it’s a fly-by-wire operation that might not fully succeed, and the stakes are pretty intense. I thought Pivot Point had a nail-biting conclusion, but Split Second manages to top even that.

West leaves us in a good spot this time. She kind of wraps up this story arc in such a way that if there weren’t any more Pivot Point novels, I would be OK with that. Yet there is still so much more to see. Without verging too far into spoilers, I’ll just add that I like Laila’s offhand observation that there’s more than one way to defy the Compound—from without and from within. There’s so much potential here to keep telling these stories about paranormal teens who might be more responsible with their powers than the people raising them. With this sequel, West shows she can keep changing things up while retaining the core that makes the characters and the setting fascinating. It seems like this is it for Addie and Laila. I can only hope that means we’ll see newer, even cooler novels from West in the future.

Addison Coleman, or Addie, is a mutantTomorrow Person—damn it, she’s got mind powers, mmkay? But not floaty-move-stuff-with-your-mind powers—that’s TAddison Coleman, or Addie, is a mutantTomorrow Person—damn it, she’s got mind powers, mmkay? But not floaty-move-stuff-with-your-mind powers—that’s Telekinetics—or memory-erasing powers—that’s Erasing—she can see the two possible paths that branch from a choice she has to make—Discerning, or Divergence, or whatever. The names aren’t that important. This is the Tomorrow People if the Tomorrow People were led by adults and not afraid for their lives because they’re all safe in a Compound in Texas. Addie has led a pretty privileged and cushiony life. But that all changes when her parents divorce.

The eponymous Pivot Point is Addie’s choice of who to live with: Dad, who is leaving the Compound to live among the “norms”; or Mom, who is staying in the Compound and trying to keep everything status quo? Naturally Addie uses her power to find out what would happen along either path. Turns out that either way isn’t that good … but Kasie West doesn’t give Addie an easy way out. She has to choose one option.

Each chapter has a definition as an epigraph. It took me longer than it should have to figure out that the chapters where Addie chooses Dad start with words that have norm in them, while the chapters with Mom in the Compound have definitions of words that contain para. I see what you did there! It’s actually helpful, though, especially towards the middle of the book where the worldlines start to converge again.

This dual-worldline narrative is awesome. It’s by far one of the coolest reading experiences I’ve had in a while. West could have made it even more gimmicky, and I think she wisely chose to keep it pretty simple. One question I had early on after Addie embarked on her “Search” was simply, what happens if you Search within a Search? Is it possible to get into some kind of Search infinite regression? Fortunately, West poses and answers this question in the book. (No spoilers!)

As cool as the power sounds, if I’m nitpicking I have to point out how it seems to create false dilemmas. Or can Addie see all possible futures? For example, if she’s going to buy an ice cream cone and can choose chocolate, strawberry, or coconut, can she see all three? Or is this only ever a binary divergence phenomenon?

To be honest it doesn’t bother me too much. Addie’s power doesn’t really affect the plot beyond the macro-level structure it creates for the narrative. And that, as I said, is pretty cool. West alternates between the norm/para futures that Addie envisions. We see Addie make friends at a norm high school, only to drift away from her awesome but somewhat unstable best friend, Laila, back at the Compound. In the para-verse, Addie and Laila stay fast friends, but Addie starts dating the high school quarterback (blech) only to discover there’s something more sinister happening, and she’s getting involved whether she likes it or not.

The dualistic structure of the narrative makes for some fascinating dramatic irony. In both futures, Addie’s dad consults on a murder investigation back at the Compound. The same person of interest, a guy who pretends he’s cool by calling himself Poison, shows up in both worldlines. These larger events—the ones not easily affected by whatever Addie chooses—remain the same, so spotting the ripples from Addie’s choice becomes a fun kind of game. In this way, West explores the butterfly effect in an interesting way.

I’m a bit disappointed the budding romance between Addie and Trevor in one ’verse belies Addie’s contention that yes, indeed, girls and boys can be platonic friends. I want more YA with mixed gender platonic friendships! But I can’t really fault Pivot Point if that was the story that West wanted to tell, because of course, there isn’t anything a priori wrong with Addie seeking a boyfriend in either ’verse.

On the other hand, Addie’s friendship with Laila is a lot of fun. Laila is definitely one of those best friends who isn’t always good for you, if you know what I mean. She pushes Addie, sometimes in directions I (and even Addie) might disagree with. She’s a very outgoing, in-your-face, this-is-in-my-comfort-zone-even-if-it’s-not-in-yours kind of girl. And that’s cool. I appreciate how she acts as a foil for Addie, and how Addie’s friendship with Laila eventually proves to be the true pivot point of this book.

As the story comes to a head, Addie begins to realize that both choices suck. I can’t help but think West is using this as a metaphor for the fact that having to choose a parent in a divorce really does suck. But in Addie’s case, either path leads to rather dark outcomes. So she has to choose the “least dark” future, or at least the one where she and Laila have a fighting chance at rescuing some semblance of their old life afterwards. But West seems to be setting things up for a much deeper conflict in the sequel (which I also happened to borrow from the library!).

Pivot Point is a solid novel. As far as YA goes, it hits on a lot of tropes without belabouring them. I think there’s lots here to keep older readers like myself interested too. West’s take on the mutants-among-us trope, combined with the cool way she spins out the narratives in parallel, makes for an interesting read. There were moments when my interest started to flag, and then we got to the climax. I was reading during the breaks between innings at a baseball game … and suddenly I did not want to put the book down. I was relieved when the game ended so I could go home and plow through the remaining few chapters, because I needed to know how it worked out. That’s how the book made me feel.

(I was definitely annoyed by the summary resolution/sequel tease at the end. But the magnitude of the exhilaration I felt from those last few chapters more than made up for it.)

This book has been on my to-read list for a while. So, like you do, when I saw the entire series on display in Chapters in paperback, I bought all ofThis book has been on my to-read list for a while. So, like you do, when I saw the entire series on display in Chapters in paperback, I bought all of them despite having never read anything by Sarah J. Maas, secure in the knowledge that if I hated the first book, I could blame all of you, everyone on the Internet for leading me astray.

You are all safe.

This time.

Celaena Sardothien is a badass assassin, but prior to the start of Throne of Glass, she was caught and imprisoned in a forced labour camp. Against such odds she has survived long enough to be plucked from the camp by the Crown Prince of Adarlan. He chooses her to compete in a tournament-style competition among other convicts to become the next King’s Champion, i.e., the king’s own pet killer. While Celaena trains and competes, she calibrates herself to the political climate of the capital, and attempts to solve the mysterious, possibly supernatural killings of other Champion candidates.

Celaena intrigues me as a character. I’m not sure I like her that much. She is brash, and of course, there’s the whole “trained to kill in cold blood” aspect of her personality. I very much respect an author who can create an unlikable protagonist and make me enjoy their journey and their story, and that is the case here. I didn’t necessarily like Celaena as a person, but I cared what happened to her. I certainly didn’t want to see her sent back to Endovier, or killed, etc.

Whenever you have a character who is supposed to be legendary at their skill set, suddenly you have a problem. They have to be good enough on the page that they are worthy of the legend; yet you also need to create conflict and show their vulnerability. From the beginning, Maas walks this line very well. Celaena’s time in Endovier has weakened her, particularly from malnutrition, and Maas chronicles the road to recovery. She was a scary-good assassin prior to her imprisonment, but now she is somewhat reduced. Even as she recovers her strength and other skills, she finds herself deep in political intrigue and supernatural mysteries that are not necessarily things she has been trained to confront. Following Celaena’s recovery and watching her weigh the pros and cons of playing along with this stupid Champions contest versus fleeing and becoming a fugitive is one of the most interesting things about this book.

Maas also makes a very smart decision, one which would have been easy to overlook: she does not show us all the Tests the candidates undergo. It’s something like fourteen weeks of training/Tests leading up to the battles among the final four. Maas shows us one or two Tests, then they fade into the background, mentioned in various off hand ways while Celaena deals with things that are obviously more important. In books with this kind of plot structure (think Goblet of Fire), the temptation to have to show all of the competitions can be strong—and if they are truly relevant to the plot and character arcs, then there isn’t anything wrong. But Throne of Glass would have dragged on and on if Maas had done that.

Instead, we’re propelled into a world of darkness and shadows. The King of Adarlan has, while conquering the countries around him, attempted to stamp out magic everywhere. Someone or something knows how to use Wyrdmarks, though, to summon and sic demonic-like beings on Champion candidates. And this brings me back to Celaena’s characterization, and while I don’t like her personally, I really enjoy how Maas characterizes her.

Celaena is smart. She is street smart and book smart, and I like that Maas shows both aspects and also distinguishes between them. Celaena is equally at home killing someone with a sword or arrow as she is in a library, surrounded by books. In the same way that I have no frame of reference to relate to her experiences in Endovier or her attraction to various potential partners, her elation over entering the royal library is a scene I can really identify with. Celaena recognizes when to use physical methods to get what she wants and when to use her brain. There is no one tool or method that will get the job done.

Similarly, I love that Celaena is equally at home wearing functional, fight-ready attire or getting decked out in hair and makeup and corsets and dresses. All too often, the “strong woman” in fantasy books is idealized as a butch or non-femme character who wears pants and swears and eschews traditionally feminine attire and activities. It’s great that those characters exist, because butch and non-femme people deserve to see themselves portrayed in these roles—but femme people, or people like Celaena who find themselves enjoying all sorts of different types of clothing, need to see themselves too.

I also liked the positive female friendship between Celaena and Nehemia. It isn’t cloying or over the top but rather founded in a certain shared outsider status, not to mention the fact that both speak Ellywe. They each bring different knowledge and experiences to the table and respect each other, and while they occasionally discuss men, this book definitely passes the Bechdel test. I like that Nehemia aids Celaena, often in unseen ways, but that this doesn’t stop Celaena from questioning Nehemia’s motives while searching for answers to the murders.

As much as I liked the friendship, the romance part of the book did little for me. “Two men love her” the back of the book proudly proclaims, and it is immediately obvious which two men that would be. And the Crown Prince falling for a killer who hates his father and everything the monarchy stands for? Really? I get that star-crossed love is a popular story trope, and all that jazz, but that doesn’t stop it from seeming very contrived. If you like romance and want it in the books you read, then maybe you’ll like it here. For me, though, it seemed superfluous—you could have cropped out the romance elements here and still have a fine book.

I’m also not as thrilled by the antagonists here as I am by the protagonist. Cain, Perrington, and Kaltain just seem like fairly stock, flat attempts at injecting threats into the story. The exception, which surprised me, is Dorian’s father. During his first appearance he is a pretty clichéd Warlord of Toxic Masculinity type deal—but at the very end of the book, we learn he has a much deeper game. He’s much more involved in what is happening in Erilea and in the supernatural aspects of the story, and I really liked this glimpse. It leaves me even more excited to read the next book—I’m not picking it up right away, but obviously it’ll be sometime soon.

When I re-read this book, I might give it five stars. It’s that close. I just have all these … feelings.

I’ve waited a long time to read The Republic oWhen I re-read this book, I might give it five stars. It’s that close. I just have all these … feelings.

I’ve waited a long time to read The Republic of Thieves and brought it with me as an airplane/travel book. It did not disappoint. For a third time Scott Lynch manages to deliver an incredible adventure breathtaking in the depth of its intrigue and the passionate portrayal of its characters. Without question I liked it better than Red Seas Under Red Skies—there was no heist plot derailed by a pirate plot in the middle of the book—and in some ways it is indubitably superior to The Lies of Locke Lamora. After all, Lynch finally delivers on an unspoken promise dangled before the reader since that first volume: we get to meet Sabetha!

Having heard about Sabetha for two entire books, it’s a pleasure to finally meet her in the flesh. The Republic of Thieves introduces two Sabethas: Sabetha in her youth, when Locke first meets her in Shade’s Hill, and then later when they are reunited as part of the Gentlemen Bastards; and Sabetha in adulthood, having lived and conned alone for years, reunited with Locke in Karthain to match wits and compete against each other to rig an election. Young Locke courts Sabetha for the first time while they spend a summer on stage outside Camorr. Older Locke must reconcile his lust and love for Sabetha with the obstacles put in place by their Bondsmagi employers.

This parallel structure that worked so well The Lies of Locke Lamora once more provides a satisfactory look at how both Locke and Sabetha have grown and changed (or not changed, as the case might be). The previous books all featured great depictions of women; Lynch demonstrates how it’s possible to create a cornucopia of cultures with varying traditions and attitudes and still feature women characters who are diverse and interesting individuals. But The Republic of Thieves, with its character of Sabetha, is the superlative use of this talent. She is the foil to Locke’s Magnificent Bastard personality, and boy does she know how to take him down a notch or two, in both time periods.

I love how Sabetha explains to Locke why being with him is so frustrating. She points out the deference shown to him by the other Gentlemen Bastards, and then goes on to point out how he takes it for granted. That’s right: Lynch has Sabetha talk about Locke’s privilege. And it’s great to see him sputter and at a loss for words, because he is completely prepared to declare his love and extol her virtues and protest his fidelity … but there was no way for him to anticipate those critiques. Though I don’t know from personal experience, I suspect this is typical of many relationships … all the second-guessing one does is for nought, because usually the problem is that one is totally oblivious to what the problem is….

Locke’s fallibility has always been a strength of this series. He is clever, fast to think on his feet, and ferociously loyal—yet people still manage to get the better of him at times. The fun comes from watching him take revenge or escape by the skin of his teeth by improvising upon his improvisations. Every once in a while, however, something happens that he can’t improvise his way out of, not entirely. Something blindsides him, and there are genuine moments of bewilderment. Sabetha’s critiques of him are one of those, as are Patience’s revelations about his origins.

That’s the part I’m ambivalent about. On one hand, I love that Lynch continues to expand the mythology he is building in this world. On the other hand, it’s just not a direction I expected him to go in—and maybe that should excite me, but it doesn’t. I suppose I’m worried it’s a cludge to give Locke a little more angst without actually changing too much about the formula or format of the series.

Still, at this point in the game, I guess Lynch has earned a good deal of leeway from me!

The political machinations in The Republic of Thieves are great fun. Locke’s energy, as Jean observes, has never been higher in recent memory. He inhabits the carefree character of election manager Sebastian Lazari and comes up with all manner of interesting schemes. I kind of expected the contest to end up the way it did—Lynch foreshadows the outcome, rather obliquely, in the flashbacks—but it was still well-executed.

Likewise, the theatrical subplot in the flashbacks is also great fun. Locke, Sabetha, Jean, and the Sanzas find themselves embroiled in their very first major con game—more of out necessity than avarice or ambition—and it’s so great. Complication upon complication piles up, and only their quick wits and specialized skill set allow them to escape.

If, like me, you’re a fan of this series, then there’s little that you won’t like in The Republic of Thieves. It’s once more a fun book that nevertheless has high stakes and a strong emotional arc. Lynch is a master at creating characters you care about and plots that you can sink your teeth into.

If you’re new, don’t start here. I mean you could, but that would be shooting yourself in the foot. It is so worthwhile to start at the first book. You’ll gobble them up like the richest, most filling of desserts. And then, like me, you will be stuck waiting for the next book … soon….